Charlize Theron Reveals Secret Oscar Recipe; Let's Make Our Own!

Charlize Theron's Best Actress Oscar win in 2003 was hardly unexpected. Roger Ebert had declared her performance as Aileen Wuornos in Monster "one of the greatest performances in the history of the cinema," and she cleaned up at the Golden Globes and Independent Spirit Awards. But there's no denying that Theron's win followed in a certain Oscar tradition, and in this funny clip with MTV, Theron acknowledges it as such. Let's compare notes with the Young Adult star and come up with our own recipes for Oscar victories in the big four acting categories.

She's not kidding about the biopic rumor -- Sandra Bullock, Marion Cotillard, Helen Mirren, Reese Witherspoon, Theron, and Nicole Kidman all picked up Best Actress statuettes for playing real-life women. The official recipe for a Best Actress win looks like this:

Best Actress

-1 cup of biopic grandeur

-4 tablespoons of palatable defiance

-A pinch of vulnerability

-Add prosthethics and odd makeup liberally

Best Actor

-1 cup of biopic grandeur

-10 packets of stalwart angst

-1 brick of moral conflict

-A dash of tragedy

Best Supporting Actor

-3 heaping dollops of unhinged psychosis

-A smattering of nutty character tics

-1 barely tolerable accent

-A sprinkling of old age

Best Supporting Actress

-5 cups of steely self-possession OR creepiness

-4 buckets of crazy eyes

-1 powerful monologue

-Traces of comic relief

Am I missing any essential ingredients?