Charlize Theron opened up and reflected on the “trauma” of her mother shooting her father in self-defense.
In an interview with the magazine Town & Country, the actress of Mad Max Fury Road 48 years old, reflected on the traumatic memory when explaining what led her to become an advocate against gender violence.
“I would say it’s an easy correlation to make,” he told the outlet. “But I think it’s much more complicated than a one-night traumatic event.”
She continued: “With or without that, gender-based violence is all too evident in South Africa and around the world. It is difficult not to be aware of these things simply because you are a woman.”
The incident occurred in 1991. The Academy Award winner was 15 years old when her father, Charles, threatened Theron and her mother. In December 2019, the actress recalled in an interview with NPR: “My father was so drunk that he couldn’t even walk when he came into the house with a gun.”
“My mother and I were in my room leaning against the door because he was trying to go through it,” she said. “So we were both putting pressure from the inside so that it couldn’t happen. He stepped back and shot toward the door three times.”
“None of the bullets hit us, which is a miracle,” he added, later describing his father as a “very sick man” who had been an alcoholic his entire life.
“I knew him only one way, and it was as an alcoholic,” he revealed to the media. “It was a pretty desperate situation. “Our family was a little caught up in this.”
“And the day-to-day unpredictability of living with an addict is something that stays in your body for the rest of your life, beyond just a one-night incident,” he observed.
The shooting changed Theron’s life forever, and through her foundation, Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project, she launched the #TogetherForHer initiative in 2020 to advocate for victims and survivors of violence around the world during the pandemic lockdown.
Theron, who is also a UN peace ambassador, felt there was a need for greater emphasis on women-focused issues, especially in light of the alarming statistics on gender-based violence during the pandemic.
“Covid-19 is raising the numbers of domestic violence at a terrible rate,” he told Forbes in 2020. “When we were asked to stay safe in the pandemic, the idea ended up being a death sentence for many people and children who were forced to lock themselves in homes with abusers.”
He continued: “There are problematic issues that people understand better today. There are deeper things embedded in our society that are quite problematic, whether it’s LGBTQ rights or women’s rights, Black Lives Matter, to name a few, and it’s good to look at it, as long as we can find resources and forms of change.”
Translation of Michelle Padilla
