CHARLIZE Theron has been doing the interview rounds promoting her film In the Valley of Elah, a war themed flick that bombed here big-time when it was released last year, though it did earn critical kudos.

Though she takes understandable pride in her work, the Oscar winning South African actress has, she says, other priorities in her life, chief among them her Irish boyfriend/kind of husband Stuart Townsend.

We say "kind of" because the long-term couple haven't actually made their partnership legal in the eyes of the law - they say they'll wait until gays are accorded the same privilege - but they've both made it clear that they consider what they have as good as wedlock.

"We are married in our own eyes," Charlize said last month. "We are not married by church and state and did not go to a service, in the eyes of God. I did not wear a white dress. But, as far as I am concerned, we are married and I have a ring. I think it is an old Victorian ring."

Charlize and Stu were at the recent Sundance Film Festival for work-related reasons, but they did take time to travel the world last year during some time off, she says.

"I wanted a break and to enjoy time with people who matter in my life, like Stuart and my mum, Gerda," offered Charlize.

"We also traveled a lot - Greece, Turkey, Belize and Guatemala. We went back home to South Africa in my case, and Ireland in Stuart's. It gives us a great feeling of joy to throw on a backpack and live the culture for a month, staying in places which are not five-star hotels." Let's see - legal marriage is a drag, and five-star hotels are bummers. Got that?