“She ended the threat.”
Charlize Theron has detailed the night that her mother shot and killed her father in self-defence.
The Mad Max actor said that she and her mother, Gerda, were in their South Africa home when her dad, Charles, began shooting through the bedroom room.
Theron, who was a teenager at the time, said that her father was so intoxicated “… he shouldn’t have been able to walk when he came into the house with a gun.”
“My mum and I were in my bedroom leaning against the door, because he was trying to push through the door,” she told NPR.
“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 those bullets ever hit us, which is just a miracle. But in self-defence, she ended the threat.”
Theron said that her father, an alcoholic, was a “very sick man” and that growing up with him around was “hopeless.”
She added that she believes more people should know her story.
“I’m not ashamed to talk about it, because I do think that the more we talk about these things, the more we realise we are not alone in any of it,” she said.
Theron, who has two children, later moved to Italy with her mother to begin her modelling career. She eventually moved to LA in 1994 to become an actor.
