Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Charlize: My kids think I’m cool at last. It’s better than an Oscar
Actress on perks of Addams Family role
EXCLUSIVE WITCH would you prefer for a mum, kids? Morticia Addams or a Hollywood star with one of those shiny statues.
BY EMMA PRYER
For Charlize Theron’s two children there’s no contest – it’s the batty lady in black and the Oscar can go Fester in a cupboard.
Actress Charlize, 46, is in no doubt which is coolest with daughters Jackson, nine, and August, six – and she’s delighted.
“I can tell they are quietly pretty chuffed their mum is Morticia,” said the star who plays the spooky matriarch in The Addams Family 2, out this week.
“As a mum who, like all mothers, wants their kids to think she’s cool, it’s a feeling no Oscar can replace.”
The Mad Max actress also voiced Morticia in the first animation – and she says the kooky family’s love for one another chimes with her.
“I love the relationship between them, their values,” she said. “We need to find kindness and understanding for others who might not look or talk like us. To be a part of something like this and know families will see it really resonates with me. If it grabs them somewhere in the heart and makes them think a little differently about things, boy, would that be great.”
The actress, worth around £117million, adopted Jackson in 2012 and August in 2015. And she says her clan share many of the same values as The Addams Family.
She explains: “I’ve always made sure they know exactly who we were as a family, what we stand for
and what our values are. Kindness and treating others in the way you want to be treated is how to go through life.” Charlize – who won Best Actress as a serial killer in 2003 movie Monster – described the latest Addams Family film as “full of heart” and “hilarious”.
She even draws parallels with the way she and Morticia talks to the kids. She said: “She speaks to them the same as she speaks to adults – something my mother did with me and I do with mine. There’s no googly talk.”
Charlize recorded her voiceover at home in LA in lockdown. She says: “I was basically in my closet. They sent me a case with all the stuff and instructions to set it up.”
In 2008 she became a United Nations Messenger of Peace for humanitarian work. Among the many causes she supports is HIV education, women’s empowerment and stopping gender-based violence.