'Bombshell' Actress Charlize Theron Opens Up About Her Mother Killing Her Father In Self-Defense

In a new interview, "Bombshell" actress Charlize Theron discussed several topics, including the sexual harassment that she herself has endured over the years and her decision to adopt as a single parent. She also opened up about the night that her mother, Gerda, killed her father, Charles Theron, in self-defense in June 1991. The actress was 15 years old at the time.

In the recent discussion with NPR, Theron acknowledged the fact that her father was an alcoholic and that the family saw it as a "hopeless situation."

"Our family was just kind of stuck in it. And the day-to-day unpredictability of living with an addict is the thing that you sit with and have kind of embedded in your body for the rest of your life, more than just this one event of what happened one night," she said.

Continuing, she elaborated that while she wished that night "would have never happened," she believes it's an expected outcome when you don't deal with those types of underlying problems.

"My father was so drunk that he shouldn't have been able to walk when he came into the house with a gun. My mom and I were in my bedroom leaning against the door, because he was trying to push through the door," the actress said, adding that eventually he "took a step back and just shot through the door three times." In the end, she said her mom "ended the threat" in self-defense.

This is not the first time that the "Mad Max: Fury Road" star has discussed her past. According to People, in a 2017 interview with Howard Stern she opened up about how she had remained silent about that night for quite some time.

"I just pretended like it didn’t happen. I didn’t tell anybody — I didn’t want to tell anybody. Whenever anybody asked me, I said my dad died in a car accident. Who wants to tell that story? Nobody wants to tell that story," she stated. However, she believes that ultimately both her and her mom "dealt with that night really well."

"I think both of us still have to deal with the life that we had — and that’s what people don’t really realize. It’s not just about what happened one night," the Academy Award-winning actress concluded.