Charlize Theron is opening up about a harrowing chapter from her past, recounting the night her mother killed her father in an act of self-defense at their home in South Africa.
In a candid interview with the New York Times published on Saturday, the 50-year-old actress shared how an ordinary social misstep in 1991 spiraled into violence, culminating in her father, Charles Theron, opening fire in their home. Her mother, Gerda Jacoba Aletta Maritz, acted swiftly to protect them both.
Reflecting on the incident, Theron revealed that she once felt isolated in her trauma, believing she and her courageous mother were alone in experiencing such a terrifying ordeal. “I never knew about a story like that,” she confessed. “When this happened to us, I thought we were the only people.”
Theron stressed the importance of discussing domestic violence, stating that sharing such stories can help others feel less isolated. “This should be talked about because it makes other people not feel alone,” she emphasized, adding that she no longer feels haunted by those memories.
Theron said the kind of domestic violence she and her mother were subjected to ‘should be talked about because it makes other people not feel alone,’ and she added, ‘I’m not haunted by this stuff anymore.’
The future Oscar winner, who was only 15 at the time, recounted how the fatal confrontation was set off by a seemingly innocuous family visit to her uncle’s home.
Charlize Theron, 50, delved into the horrific night in 1991 when her mother Gerda shot and killed her father in self-defense after he shot up their home in a drunken rage in an interview with the New York Times that was published Saturday; pictured in September in Las Vegas
Theron’s mother, Gerda, was never charged for the fatal shooting, which was determined to be in self-defense, as her father Charles had fired multiple shots at the them and was trying to obtain more firearms when he was killed; Gerda and Charlize Theron seen in 2019 in Hollywood
She and her mother had just gone to see a movie, but they weren’t able to get back into their home, which was filled with locked steel doors due to the violence engulfing South Africa at the time, because her father had taken the key with him.
So they headed over to his brother’s house, where she said Charles could often be found drinking.
‘I had to pee really badly,’ Theron admitted, ‘So I ran into the house to get to the toilet…’
However, her father interpreted her behavior as being ‘rude,’ as she hadn’t stopped to greet everyone in the house before rushing to the bathroom.
She explained that it’s a ‘big thing in South Africa, the kind of respect that you have to have for elders.’
For the rest of the night, her father — whom Theron previously revealed had been drunk that night — ‘was in a state where he just spiraled.’
Theron recalled him pestering her with questions about the visit to her uncle’s home, ‘Like: “Why didn’t you stop? Who do you think you are?”‘
Once she and her mother left the gathering and headed back home, she asked Gerda to help smooth things over.
After going to the movies, Gerda and Charlize realized their father had locked them out of their house, so they found him drinking at his brother’s house; pictured in 2019 in NYC
Theron said her father stewed all night after she rushed without saying hello to anyone because she desperately had to use the bathroom, which was a breach of South African decorum; pictured in 2020 in Hollywood
‘I knew he was mad at me. So I said to her, “When he eventually decides to come home, please tell him I’m asleep.”‘
Theron recalled how ‘scared’ she was even after she got home, and she remembered going into her room and turning all the lights off to make it look as if she was sleeping.
‘My window faced the driveway, and I could tell the level of anger, frustration, or unhappiness by the way he drove in,’ she said. ‘I just knew something bad was going to happen.’
Her father — who was carrying a gun and had brought his brother along — signaled that she was correct by shooting through the steel door to the house, ‘making it very clear that he was going to kill’ them.
Gerda realized just how ‘serious’ the situation had become, and Theron said she rushed to a safe to retrieve her own 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,’ Theron recalled, noting that her father made his intentions clear when ‘he just stepped back and started shooting through the door.’
‘And this is the crazy thing: Not one bullet hit us,’ Theron marveled to the Times. ‘It’s insane when you think about it that way.’
‘But the messaging was very clear,’ she added, saying that her father appeared to be signaling, ‘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,’ all with the ‘encouragement from the brother.’
She and her mother returned home, but she feared something terrible would happen. When her father returned later, he was joined by his brother and began firing a gun through the door to their home; pictured in October in Paris
After her broke in, she and her mother barricaded themselves behind her bedroom door. Charles began firing through the door, but the bullets miraculously missed them; pictured in 2004 in LA
According to Theron, her mother ended up shooting both her father and his brother in her bid to save their lives.
As Charles ran to the safe to retrieve more firearms, Gerda opened the bedroom door and saw his brother, who ran down the hall away from her.
‘She shot one bullet down the hallway that ricocheted seven times and shot him in the hand,’ Theron recalled.
‘It’s stuff you can’t explain,’ she marveled.
‘And then she followed my father, who was by then opening the safe to get more weapons out, and she shot him,’ Theron continued.
Her father died of his injuries, but the shooting was later determined to be justified by self-defense, and Gerda did not face charges over the shooting.
Theron also mused on how the verbal abuse that she and her mother experienced from him was tolerated and overlooked in South African society.
‘Women really get a very, very unfair shake, even in this country. Nobody takes it seriously, the situation that they’re in,’ she said. ‘And I don’t think anybody took my mom seriously.’
Theron said Gerda used her own gun to wound Charles’s brother in the hand, and when her husband tried to open the safe to get more guns, she shot and killed him; pictured in June 2025
She added that the drinking culture for men allowed people to overlook her father’s behavior because so many other men were also heavy drinkers.
‘I have memories from when I was really young, seeing really drunk people, and it scared me,’ the actress said, adding that it was so bad that there were ‘people crawling on the floor drunk.’
‘That became so consistent that it was every Friday, Saturday, maybe even every Wednesday,’ she said, while noting that her father had built a bar inside their home to accommodate his partying.
Theron, who described her father as an alcoholic years earlier, said he ‘would go missing’ after drinking, before finally returning ‘in a state that was pretty severe,’ which led to ‘a lot of verbal abuse.’
‘He was scary. He didn’t hit me, he didn’t throw me against a wall, but he would do things like drive drunk,’ Theron said. ‘There was a lot of verbal abuse, a lot of threatening language that just became normal.’
Following the shooting, Theron described how determined her mother was not to let it affect their lives.
‘The next morning, she sent me to school. She was just like, “We’re going to move on,”‘ Theron recalled, admitting that the strategy was ‘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,’ she continued, adding, ‘We didn’t have therapists around, so in her head the best therapy was, “We’ve got to move on.”‘
The shooting was ruled to be in self-defense, and Gerda was never charged. But Charlize recalled feeling intense shame for years before she learned of other women and families who had been similarly abused; pictured in June 2025 in North Hollywood
Theron, who would leave South Africa just a year later for a fresh start, said there was a ‘lot of shame surrounding [the shooting] because everybody knew.’
‘I felt like kids had this attitude towards me,’ she said, adding that the ‘only time I became violent’ was a confrontation with a girl at school who taunted her about having seen her late father when he was intoxicated.
When she was just 16, Theron and her mother set off for Europe, where she launched a modeling career.
After some early success, she moved to New York to enroll at the Joffrey Ballet School before a knee injury made becoming a professional ballet dancer impossible.
In 1994, she moved on her own to Los Angeles in the hope of getting into the film industry, and it was there that she was discovered by a talent agent after he witnessed a confrontation she had with a bank teller.
Theron would go on to score early roles in blockbusters like The Devil’s Advocate (1997) and critically acclaimed films like The Cider House Rules (1999), before she won an Oscar for starring as the real-life serial killer Aileen Wuornos in 2003’s Monster.
