Charlize Theron Shares Deeply Personal Story of Night Her Mother Killed Her Father
Charlize Theron has long spoken about the night her mother killed her father in self-defense. But in a recent conversation with The New York Times' The Interview, the Oscar-winning actor revisits the moment with a level of detail - and clarity - that still resonates decades later.
The night started simply enough. Theron, 15 at the time, and her mother had just returned home from a movie, but the steel door to their house was locked - a precaution, she explains, was due to her country being gripped by violence.
"Every room in our house had a steel door … because that's the kind of violence that we were living in," Theron, now 50, says. "Our country was on the brink of civil war."
They went instead to her uncle's house, where her father was drinking - nothing unusual, she recalls. But on the way home, something felt off. Theron then told her mother something she had never said before: that she should leave him.
"I had never imagined that those words would come out of my mouth," she says. "Leaving that house, I knew something was just different. She knew it, too."
Later that night, fear set in.
"I went to bed thinking something bad was going to happen," Theron recalls.
It did. Her father broke into the house, firing through the steel doors.
"He made it very clear that he was going to kill us," she says.
Theron and her mother hid in Theron's bedroom, bracing themselves against the door as bullets came through it. Miraculously, they were left unscathed.
"And this is the crazy thing: Not one bullet hit us."
As her father moved to retrieve more weapons, her mother opened the door and fired.
"She shot one bullet down the hallway," Theron says, which hit her uncle in the hand, "and then she followed my father … and she shot him."
In the years since, Theron has spoken openly about the trauma - not as something that defines her, but as something that connects her to others.
"I think these things should be talked about," she says. "It makes other people not feel alone."
The interview includes more insight into the childhood of the mom of two, how she has worked to prevent violence against women and girls, and her new film Apex, an action thriller co-starring Taron Egerton.
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This story was originally published April 18, 2026 at 1:21 PM.