Theron spills beans on girly son

FOR YEARS there have been rumours, and now the truth is finally out – Charlize Theron has been raising her eldest child Jackson, as a girl.

Seven-year-old Jackson was adopted as a baby and was introduced to the world as a boy.

Then photographs appeared of Jackson wearing skirts and dresses and having long braided hair.

Tongues have been wagging and Hollywood wondered what on Earth Theron was up to.

She revealed all in an interview. “Yes, I thought she was a boy, too,” Charlize told the Mail Online recently.

“Until she looked at me when she was three years old and said ‘I am not a boy!’”

Theron’s other child, August, was also adopted and is a girl.

“They were born who they are, and exactly where in the world both of them get to find themselves as they grow up and who they want to be is not for me to decide.

“My job as a parent is to celebrate them, love them and make sure they have everything they need in order to be what they want to be.”

She said her mother, Gerda, had an influence in how she was raising Jackson: “You can blame my mom for the fact I don’t know any better. I grew up in a country where people lived with half-truths and lies and whispers. Nobody said anything outright, and I was raised not to be like that.

“I was taught by my mom that you have to speak up; you have to be able to know that, when this life is over, you’ll have lived the truth you’re comfortable with, and that nothing negative can come from that.”

Theron’s troubled childhood has been well-documented. She grew up in Crystal Park in Benoni, and her alcoholic and abusive father would regularly beat her mother.

When she was 15, her father came home in a rage, carrying a gun and threatening to kill her and her mom. Gerda shot him dead, in an act that was ruled as self-defence.

“When my father passed away and, all of a sudden, we had a huge debt of money that we owed and every bank was after her, she took care of it. It didn’t happen overnight – it took her five years, but she did do it,” she said.

After her father’s death, her mother took over his construction business.

“The greatest gift my mom gave me was the sight of her putting on her heels and her power suit, and going into a board meeting with eight guys and just running the show.

“I’d just look at her with my mouth open. I was thinking ‘All right. I want to be like that, too’.

“I never had any fears about being a woman. It wasn’t until I was out on my own and in my early twenties that I even realised that women are not respected in every field,” Theron said.

She is single, having split from actor Sean Penn four years ago.

“Right now, I don’t go into dates jumping that far ahead and thinking: ‘Huh, can I marry this guy? Is he going to be good with my kids and is my mom going to like him?’

“I tend to treat it very much like ‘Let’s see if you are a good friend and see where this goes’.

“Being a successful, strong and independent woman, can make lasting relationships harder.”

Charlize and Jackson Theron