Charlize draws on mom’s killing of dad for new film

SHE saw her mother shoot her abusive, alcoholic father dead when she was just 15.

And now, in an interview with French TV station TF1 this week, Charlize Theron has opened up about how she drew on that experience to star in Dark Places.

In the movie, based on Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn’s bestseller, the 39-year-old stars as Libby Day, who saw her mother and sisters brutally murdered by a Satanic cult when she was just eight.

Speaking perfect French, the South African actress said: “There’s definitely an acknowledgement on my part that I had an experience of a very traumatic experience, an event, in my life and somehow it’s formed me.”

In the book and the film, Libby has to testify in court about the killings.

Theron added: “It really is examining what a trauma like that would do to a child, especially when she’s expected to speak about it. And that’s definitely something that I can relate to, that’s definitely something that I’ve experienced in my life.”

The Monster star was home from boarding school when her mother Gerda was forced to shoot her husband Charles in self-defence after he abused and threatened the pair, drunkenly wielding a gun as he came after them.

The South African author- BETTER OFF: Charlize Theron stars in ‘Dark Places’ ities did not charge Gerda with any offence and the mother and daughter remain very close.

Theron, who adopted her three-year-old son Jackson in 2012, rarely speaks about the traumatic experience after revealing it in an interview with Diane Sawyer in 2004. — The Daily Mail