Charlize Theron “not ashamed” to talk about her mother killing her father in self-defence
Charlize Theron has opened up about the night her mother killed her father in self-defence.
Speaking to NPR, the Bombshell actress said her father Charles grappled with alcoholism for all of her life.
“It was a pretty hopeless situation. Our family was just kind of stuck in it,” the actress said.
“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.”
Theron was 15 years old when her drunk father came into the house with a gun on June 21, 1991. While she and her mother Gerda Maritz were leaning against her bedroom door to block his entry, he fired three shots through the door.
“None of those bullets ever hit us, which is just a miracle,” Theron said. “But in self-defence, she ended the threat.”
Maritz retrieved her own handgun and shot her husband, ABC News reported. No charges were brought against Maritz.
While she wished the incident had never happened, she said she is “not ashamed” to discuss the family violence she experienced.
“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,” Theron said.
“I think, for me, it’s just always been that this story really is about growing up with addicts and what that does to a person.”
Theron previously discussed the incident in a 2017 interview with the New York Times.
“I survived that, and I’m proud of that,” Theron said. “I’ve worked hard for that, too. And I am not scared of that. I am not fearful of the darkness. If anything, I am intrigued by it, because I think it explains human nature and people better.”