Oscar-winning actress Charlize Theron is the star of ELLE's June 2015 issue, on sale now. 
 
 Charlize looks incredible in Bottega Veneta and Intimissimi on the cover, and DSquared2 on the subscribers cover, both photographed by Bjarne Jonasson. 
 
 Our respect for Charlize knows no bounds. When we caught up with the Oscar-winning actress, mother and partner to Sean Penn, she was characteristically forthright on the subject of women's rights and spoke frankly about her personal relationships, ahead of the release of her latest movie, Mad Max: Fury Road. 
 
 ELLE met Charlize just after she had made international headlines by negotiating equal pay for her role in the Snow White And The Huntsman sequel. She spoke candidly to ELLE about the gender pay gap in Hollywood and her experience of being objectified in the film industry: 
 
 'I have to give them credit because once I asked, they said yes. They did not fight it. And maybe that’s the message: That we just need to put our foot down. This is a good time for us to bring this to a place of fairness, and girls need to know that being a feminist is a good thing. It doesn’t mean that you hate men. It means equal rights. If you’re doing the same job, you should be compensated and treated in the same way.’ 
 
 Charlize's stance on the pay disparity on American Hustle, and in Hollywood in general is firm: ‘When I thought about the temperature out there – with finding out what Jennifer and Amy were being paid on a set with guy actors who are their counterparts… They’re just as good as any of the guys on there. Yeah, that p*ssed me off!’ 
 
 The 39-year-old actress also opens up about the anguish of being objectified in Hollywood after her first film role in 2 Days In The Valley: 
 
 ‘Someone thought it was a good idea to market almost the entire movie on me; objectifying me a little bit. I got a lot of attention from it, but the problem was that, afterwards, it was like, “We want you to do that again. Can you just do that? And so I didn’t work for almost two years.”' 
 
 Charlize also speaks openly about her partnership with Sean Penn and the experience of working alongside him on the film The Last Face: 'Putting aside that he’s my partner, he’s the love of my life; for the first time, I felt that my work was really bleeding into my life and that made it hard. There were moments where I was incredibly unfair to him. And moments where I felt like… he was incredibly unfair to me. But it makes you realise that no matter how complicated it gets, the priority is the relationship.’ 
 
 Read our interview and see the full shoot with Charlize Theron only in the June 2015 issue of ELLE UK, out on newsstands and available via the Apple Newsstand now. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 Sean Penn thinks his fiancée Charlize Theron is so smoking hot, RadarOnline.com has learned that he gave up a longstanding cigarette habit as they prepare to walk down the aisle — and the Academy Award winning actress didn’t even have to ask! 
 
 “Sean had been a very heavy smoker for years,” an insider told Radar. “After dating Charlize for just a few months, he decided to give it up. Charlize hadn’t pressed the issue, but just asked him to abstain whenever he was around her son, Jackson. One day, Sean just announced he wasn’t going to be smoking anymore.” 
 
 “Charlize was happily stunned and was thrilled Sean was quitting,” the source said. “For the first few weeks, Sean used a nicotine patch, and would occasionally use the gum version.” 
 
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 “Sean told Charlize he was quitting because he wanted to be the healthiest version of himself for their little family,” the source continued. “He is absolutely head over heels in love with Charlize.” 
 
 As Radar reported, Penn is in the process of adopting Theron’s adorable son. 
 
 The A-list couple became engaged in November, and Penn “has already begun the paperwork to formally adopt Jackson,” an insider previously told Radar. “Charlize never placed any pressure on Sean to adopt Jackson. It has been a very natural process of them becoming a true family.” 
 
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 “Jackson calls Sean ‘daddy,’ and Sean just lights up around him,” the source continued. “Sean picks Jackson up from nursery school, and all of the parents know him.” 
 
 Sources expect the couple to marry later this summer, and it will be “very small and intimate,” the insider said. “Close friends and immediate family only.”
– Charlize Theron is once again speaking out about how very, very much she loves Sean Penn. "He’s my partner, he’s the love of my life," is one of the lines from her new interview with Elle UK, but she goes on to explain some trouble that arose while they worked together on The Last Face. "For the first time, I felt that my work was really bleeding into my life and that made it hard," she says. "There were moments where I was incredibly unfair to him. And moments where I felt like … he was incredibly unfair to me. But it makes you realize that no matter how complicated it gets, the priority is the relationship." (Penn has given up something pretty significant for Theron.)