[cnn-photo-caption image=http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/LIVING/12/01/assange.profile/t1larg.assange.shadow.afp.gi.jpg caption="Julian Assange can be charming yet cagey about his private life and is rarely shaken by discussions of even the most controversial revelations on WikiLeaks." width=300 height=169]

Atika Shubert, Ashley Fantz and Moni Basu
CNN

(CNN) - He grew up constantly on the move, the son of parents who were in the theater business in Australia.

Now, Julian Assange, 39, finds himself on the move again, wanted in Sweden for alleged sex crimes and wanted by officials around the world for his website WikiLeaks' publication of thousands of documents containing confidential information.

If he has succeeded in creating a public firewall of sorts around himself, it is perhaps because he learned as a child to cope with solitude and exposed his mind to the machinery that would overtake his life.

Assange has been described by his mother, Christine, as "highly intelligent."

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