US-South African actress Charlize Theron, speaking to The New York Times' “The Interview,” opened up about her mom shooting her father.
Image: Valerie Macon / AFP
South African-born US actress Charlize Theron has opened up in an interview with the New York Times, “The Interview,” about the night her mother fatally shot her father in self-defense.
The Oscar-winning actress detailed how her father drunkenly threatened her and her mother, Gerda, at their home in South Africa in 1991 when she was 15 years old.
Charlize detailed how things began at her uncle’s house when she needed to use the bathroom and entered the home without greeting, which is a big deal in South Africa.
“He took that as me being rude, because I didn’t stop and say hello to everybody," Charlize explained. "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 spiraled. Like: 'Why didn’t you stop? Who do you think you are?' "
Charlize then detailed how, when she and her mother got home, she told her mother, "I think you should separate from him," as this was the latest of numerous incidents involving her dad.
Avoiding a confrontation, Charlize went to her room before her father returned home. She detailed how her room had a view of the driveway and she 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 then "broke into the house" by shooting through the steel doors, common in South Africa at the time, "because that’s the kind of violence that we were living in," Charlize said.
"He shot through the steel doors to get in, making it very clear that he was going to kill us. His brother was with him as well," she recounted.
"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. She came into my bedroom. The two of us were holding the door with our bodies because there wasn’t a lock on it. And he just stepped back and started shooting through the door."
Not one bullet hit Charlize and her mother, Gerda. Her father then stopped and went to get a different gun from the safe, which is when Gerda opened the door.
"The brother ran down the hallway, and she shot one bullet down the hallway that ricocheted seven times and shot him in the hand. It’s stuff you can’t explain. And then she followed my father, who was by then opening the safe to get more weapons out, and she shot him."
IOL