Overview
- Theron, 50, recounts in a New York Times interview published Saturday how her mother shot her father when she was 15 and a South African court later deemed it self-defense.
- She describes her father arriving drunk, blasting through the home’s steel doors, and firing through her bedroom door as she and her mother braced it with their bodies.
- As her father moved to a safe to grab more weapons, her mother retrieved a gun, a shot ricocheted and hit his brother in the hand, and she then fatally shot her husband.
- Authorities filed no charges after ruling the killing justified, and Theron says she is not haunted now and speaks out so others living with violence do not feel alone.
- Theron links the episode to years of alcohol-fueled turmoil at home, her mother sending her to boarding school, and her leaving South Africa at 16 to forge an independent life.