SINGAPORE - She has a stunning face with supermodel features, an athlete’s physique coupled with that old Hollywood bombshell vibe and a penetrating stare.

If you haven’t met Charlize Theron before, it’s safe to say you could be just a little intimidated. When the 40-year-old popped into town last week to mark the Asian premiere of The Huntsman: Winter’s War, the sequel to 2012’s box office hit Snow White And The Huntsman, we were feeling those butterflies-in-the tummy. (Even though we’d previously interviewed her here for the 2012 movie Prometheus.)

But it’s clear that as formidable as Ms Theron may initially seem, she is actually great fun too. “She’s the coolest, nicest girl. She’s a really good time!” said Huntsman director Cedric Nicolas-Troyan.

He’s right. During our chat with the South African actress and mother of two, she was wonderfully frank, friendly and — get this — funny, too.

“A lot of my friends have said to me that they saw a lot of me in A Million Ways To Die In The West, minus the petticoat,” she told TODAY with a smile. “They all said, ‘That’s where we heard your humour a little bit more’. There was something about it that kind of rang very Charlize to them.”

The funny Charlize can also be seen in roles such as Rita Leeds, her hilariously childlike character in Season 3 of TV’s Arrested Development. “Oh, some of my friends will say that’s more like me too! ” she laughed.

Funny woman aside, the other F-word that can be used to describe Theron is: Female. Yes, she is, and fiercely so, in fact. Looking at her varied filmography, it’s without a doubt that Theron has always fiercely focused on provocative projects that ask questions about the way that women are defined, and the ways in which they often deal with oppression in those roles.

From Jason Reitman’s Young Adult to a spate of dynamic biopics that includes career-defining roles as serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Patty Jenkins’s 2003 film Monster, which earned her an Oscar for Best Actress; and Niki Caro’s North Country (2005), which earned her an Oscar nomination, as well as her turn as Britt Ekland in the 2004 HBO film The Life And Death Of Peter Sellers, for which she was nominated for an Emmy for best supporting actress.

Even Theron’s lead role in Karyn Kusama’s critically panned 2005 action film Aeon Flux involved playing someone that exists simultaneously as a character as well as a commentary on women in genre films. Of course, we now have her revisiting the complicated and evil Queen Ravenna in The Huntsman, whom Theron said she never thinks of as a “negative” character.

“I think she’s just grounded in a real human being,” Theron said. “And I think that we are all, in varying degrees, a little bit of everything.”

A little bit of everything is what the actress does — and not just her diverse acting roles. Theron has continually brought about important social issues to light both onscreen and off — for example, she started an anti-rape campaign in South Africa and her Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project (CTAOP) helps African youth avoid HIV/AIDS.

So is it a conscious effort for the Oscar winner to portray strong women? “I think it’s a bit of a misconception that women are either strong or weak or vulnerable. There’s never a part of me that looks like any one of the women that I’ve played in my entire career, where I’ve compartmentalised them like that,” she said.

“It’s always interesting to me when people ask: Are you a stronger person? Are you more vulnerable? Do you like to wear jeans or do you like to wear a gown? I’m all of those things!” she added. “Women are a little bit of all of those things. We are not just one thing. It’s a huge misconception, especially in film, where we have been portrayed, for so long, to just be one thing or two things.

“The idea that we can be just as conflicted as men — just as dark, just as vulnerable and just as strong; but in a different way, a female way ... (that thinking) has been left behind. So I’ve never ever compartmentalised those characters I’ve played.”

To drive her point home, Theron said that in the 20 years of doing press rounds, she has never heard somebody ask a male actor that question of characterisation. “I think that’s really interesting. It says something about how there’s a very clear difference on how we view men and women. When guys are ambitious and going after things, and are assertive in their lives, we look at them and we go, ‘That’s a strong assertive man.’ And when a woman does that, we say, ‘What a b***h!’”

According to Theron, “as film-makers and as actors, it’s (our job) to unravel the humanity within very complex characters”, citing how it’s even more important for women to do that.

However, Theron conceded that this train of thought in Hollywood could be switching tracks. “I think, slowly, something is changing in the climate where we are seeing more flawed women, and women doing very conflicting things,” she continued.

“I remember being very young and watching Jack Nicholson in The Shining, or, you know, (Robert) De Niro in Taxi Driver and I was like, ‘Why are girls not doing this? Why are girls not playing these characters?’ In my career, those moments where I’ve been allowed to explore those things have been the most satisfying for me as an actor.”

THE HUNTSMAN: WINTER’S WAR opens in Singapore April 14.