Charlize Theron recalls moment her mom shot and killed her father in front of her: 'He was a sick man'
Actress Charlize Theron opened up about the horrific night when her mother killed her father in self-defense when she was merely a teenager.
In an interview with NPR, the 44-year-old 'Bombshell' star said that on a night in June 1991, her father Charles Theron, who was a "very sick man" and "was an alcoholic all my life", started threatening her and her mother, Gerda, in a drunken haze. Charlize was only 15 at the time.
“My father was so drunk that he shouldn't have been able to walk when he came into the house with a gun," Charlize said. "My mom and I were in my bedroom leaning against the door because he was trying to push through the door. So both of us were leaning against the door from the inside to have him not be able to push through. He took a step back and just shot through the door three times. None of the bullets ever hit us, which is just a miracle," she said.
In a desperate bid to save her daughter, Gerda shot her husband. Explaining why no charges were brought against her mother, Charlize said that the attack was part of self-defense. But the impact on her psyche was everlasting.
"This family violence, this kind of violence that happens within the family, is something that I share with a lot of people," she added. "I'm not ashamed to talk about it, because I do think that the more we talk about these things, the more we realize we are not alone in any of it. I think, for me, it’s just always been that this story is about growing up with addicts and what that does to a person."
She added: "It was a pretty hopeless situation. Our family was just kind of stuck in it. And the day-to-day unpredictability of living with an addict is the thing that you sit with and have kind of embedded in your body for the rest of your life, more than just this one event of what happened one night.”
