Charlize Theron returned at length to a tragic page in her life. The South African actress recounted the evening during which her mother shot her father in self-defense. The star was then 15 years old.
The evening, in South Africa, began with a film at the cinema, she explained in an extensive interview with the “New York Times”. Back, during a visit to her uncle’s house, the teenager goes to the bathroom and does not greet the adults present, which triggers her father’s anger. A man she describes as an “alcoholic”, “scary”, and often verbally abusive or threatening.
From there, Charlize Theron, now 50, says she had a premonition of a drama to come, of “something bad” without really being able to explain why. Anyway, she goes home with her mother. And go to bed.
Later, her father comes home, and the man opens fire against the front door… The teenager’s mother then grabs a gun from the family trunk and barricades herself in a room with her only daughter.
“I’m going to kill you tonight”
“We were using all of our body weight to hold the door closed because it had no lock. Then he took a step back and started shooting through the bedroom door,” Charlize Theron recalled. “The most incredible thing is that we were not affected. It’s crazy when you think about it. But her message was clear: “I’m going to kill you tonight,” she testified.
His father walks away a little to get a gun from the safe. “My mother went out. He ran down the hallway, and she fired a bullet that ricocheted seven times and hit him in the hand. It’s inexplicable. Then she followed my father, who was opening the safe to get other weapons, and she shot him,” she explains in the American daily.
His father did not survive. The authorities having considered that the mother of the actress had acted in self-defense, she was never prosecuted. “She saved my life,” emphasizes Charlize Theron.
The actress wanted to return to the terrible story of her past because she believes that it is absolutely necessary to break the taboo around domestic violence. “Unfortunately, this is not an isolated story. By talking about it, other victims feel less alone.” She specifies, however, that this trauma is now far away and does not define her: “I am no longer haunted by all that.”
The day after the tragedy? Her mother sent her to school. “It wasn’t necessarily the healthiest solution, but it worked for us. She wanted me to forget. She didn’t want me to rehash all that,” comments Charlize Theron in the “New York Times.” “We didn’t have any therapists on hand, so for her, the best therapy was to say to herself: ‘We have to move on.’
