Charlize Theron returned to school day after mother killed father in self-defence

Actress Charlize Theron has recalled the night her mother killed her father in self-defence – and how she went back to school the next day.

Now aged 50, Theron was just 15 when the incident happened on June 21, 1991, after her father, Charles, an alcoholic, attacked her mother, Gerda, and threatened the pair.

However, she has insisted that the harrowing ordeal does not haunt her today.

Speaking candidly in a new interview, the Monster star recounted how her father initially became enraged when she entered her uncle’s house without greeting him. Charles was there drinking with his brother at the time.

Theron, who was living on a farm near Johannesburg, where she was born, said she ran into the house needing ‘to pee really badly’, but her father took that as her ‘being rude’ because she ‘didn’t stop and say hello to everybody’.

‘Big thing in South Africa, the kind of respect that you have to have for elders. And he was in a state where he just spiralled,’ she told The New York Times Magazine. ‘Like, “Why didn’t you stop? Who do you think you are?”‘

Theron and her mother then returned home, at which point the then-teen told Gerda, then 37: ‘I think you should separate from him.’

‘Leaving that house, I knew something was just different. She knew it, too,’ she explained.

When her father got back, Theron requested that her mother tell him she was sleeping to avoid a confrontation.

‘I went into my room, I turned my lights off, and I was scared,’ she remembered. ‘My window faced the driveway, and I could tell the level of anger, frustration, or unhappiness by the way he drove in. The way that he drove into that property that night – I can’t explain it to you. I just knew something bad was going to happen.’

Her father proceeded to ‘break in’ to the property, shooting through its steel doors, which were common in the country at that time due to being ‘on the brink of civil war’.

Theron said he ‘made it very clear he was going to kill [them]’, his brother in tow.

‘We knew it was serious, and so by the time he broke into the first gate, my mom ran to the safe to get her gun.’

The mother and daughter shut themselves in Theron’s bedroom, their backs to the door, as it didn’t have a lock. Her father began shooting through it.

‘And this is the crazy thing: Not one bullet hit us,’ she revealed. ‘It’s insane when you think about it that way. But the messaging was very clear – “I’m going to kill you tonight. You think I can’t come into this door? Watch me. I’m going to go to the safe. I’m going to get the shotgun”.’

When her father began walking to retrieve the weapon, her uncle ran down the hallway. Her mother shot one bullet, which ‘ricocheted seven times and shot him in the hand’.

She then followed Charles, shooting him as he opened the safe to get more guns.

‘Unfortunately, this is not an isolated story,’ she added to The Times, having been open about what happened to help comfort others.

‘These things are prevalent in a lot of homes. Women really get a very, very unfair shake, even in this country. Nobody takes it seriously, the situation that they’re in. And I don’t think anybody took my mum seriously.’

Gerda never faced any charges for the killing, which was legally adjudged to have been self-defence.

Still, there was a great deal of ‘shame’ around what happened, because ‘everybody knew’ in their area.

Despite this, Gerda was determined to ‘move on’.

‘The next morning, she sent me to school. She was just like, “We’re going to move on.”

‘Not necessarily the healthiest thing, but it worked for us. She wanted me to forget about it. She didn’t want me to sit in it.’

Throughout her career, Theron, who has remained close with her mother, often brings her to red carpet events and has used her platform to raise awareness about domestic violence.

She has long declared that she’s ‘not ashamed’ to talk about her childhood, previously describing her dad as a ‘very sick man’, saying living with an alcoholic made for a ‘pretty hopeless situation’.

In 2019, the Oscar winner told NPR that she is ‘not ashamed’ to tell people about what happened because ‘the more we talk about these things, the more we realise we are not alone.

Of course, she went on to build a hugely successful career, becoming one of the highest-paid, most decorated actresses in the world, having starred in blockbusters such as The Italian Job (2003), Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), Atomic Blonde (2017), and Bombshell (2019).

At 16, Theron moved to Italy to begin her modelling career, but felt bad for leaving her mother behind.

Gerda, however, was keen for her daughter to have a fresh start.

‘She was the one that said, “Go and make a life for yourself. There’s nothing for you here right now”.’