Charlize Theron Opens Up About The Night Her Mother Killed Her Father

Anyone who has seen 2005 North Country can relate how the Oscar award winner has always managed to pull off some of the most challenging roles on the big screens, one she even won an Oscar for, so effortlessly. A live she had lived that is no different from the inspirational movie, Charlize, while sitting down with NPR spoke about the fateful night her mum killed her father in self-defence.

Recalling the incident, when her mum, Greda opened fire at her dad, Charles Theron to protect her family from his drunken threat, Charlize who was then only 15 recalled,

“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’’ she continued.

“None of the bullets ever hit us, which is just a miracle,” Charlize added.

To save her daughter and herself, Gerda shot her husband.

“But in self-defense, she ended the threat,” the actress said, that is why no charges were brought against Gerda.

The moment left an impact on the Oscar-winner who said, “This family violence, this kind of violence that happens within the family, is something that I share with a lot of people.”

Describing her father as a ‘very sick man’ and that she was not ‘ashamed’ that her mum shot her dad, Theron 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,” she added. “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.”

 “I only knew him one way, and that was as an alcoholic,” she said. “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.”