‘Miracle’ of the night Charlize’s father shot at her... and missed
SHE has long been open about the night her mother shot her abusive, alcoholic father. But now Charlize Theron has revealed chilling new details about the horror she witnessed as a teenager. The Oscar-winning actress, 44, said she remembers dodging bullets as her father Charles – who had come home drunk with a gun – fired through a door into the room where she and her mother were hiding. ‘None of those bullets ever hit us, which is just a miracle,’ she said. Miss Theron’s mother Gerda shot Charles in self-defence in June 1991, when the South African star was 15. She said: ‘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.’
She told National Public Radio in the US: ‘Both of us were leaning against the door from the inside. He took a step back and just shot through the door three times.’
Gerda then found her own handgun. ‘In self-defence, she ended the threat,’ the actress said. Her mother faced no charges because she had been protecting herself and her daughter. Miss Theron has previously described her mother as her ‘hero’.
The star – who has two children – said that her father had been an alcoholic her entire life, which led to a ‘pretty hopeless situation’.
She opened up while promoting her new film Bombshell, which highlights sexual harassment on TV news and is released next month.