South African actress Charlize Theron is best known for her roles in Atomic Blonde, Long Shot, Mad Max, Gringo and many more and only recently has the actress opened up in detail about her upbringing with an alcoholic father whose life was cut short when he attempted to shoot and kill his family. The 44-year-old chatted with NPR's Fresh Air podcast about her days growing up in South Africa and opened up about her mother killing her father as an act of self-defense after he fired three times, while they hid behind a door in 1991.
“My father was so drunk that he shouldn’t have been able to walk when he came into the house with a gun,” she explained. “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 added. “None of the bullets ever hit us, which is just a miracle.”
Charlize's mother, Gerda, grabbed her gun and fired back as a way to protect her and her daughter, killing her now late husband. “This family violence, this kind of violence that happens within the family, is something that I share with a lot of people,” she said. “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.
“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.”