Charlize Theron: THE FAMILY TRAGEDY THAT SHAPED HER LIFE

NEARLY 35 YEARS AFTER A NIGHT OF TERROR, CHARLIZE THERON OPENS UP ABOUT THE VIOLENCE SHE WITNESSED AND THE LONG ROAD TO HEALING.

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INNER STRENGTH "I'm scrappy and I'm a survivor," the action star told The New York Times in a new interview published April 18. "There are people that would probably take somebody down way better than I can, but if my life depended on it, I'm going to bet on me."

A 15-year-old Charlize Theron and her mother, Gerda, had gone to see a movie on June 21, 1991. But her father, Charles, had the key to the steel front door of their home on a small farm in Benoni, South Africa, so they drove to his brother’s nearby place to fetch it. Charlize, who badly needed to use the bathroom, rushed inside without stopping to say hello to anyone, including her dad, who was “pretty loaded,” she recalled in a raw new interview with The New York Times. “He took that as me being rude.” When she and Gerda left, she added, “You could just tell something was different.”

HARD LIFE "My house wasn't always stable," Charlize (at 8) told the newspaper.

Later that night, a terrifying tragedy unfolded as Charles, an alcoholic, arrived home in a drunken rage and fired shots through the bedroom door where Charlize and her mom were cowering. Moments later, her father was dead. The Oscar winner has long been candid about her mother killing her father in self-defense. But revisiting it now, the 50-year-old newly revealed just how deeply that event — and the years of trauma leading up to it — have shaped her life. Reflecting on her childhood, growing up in a violent country riven by apartheid, South Africa’s system of racial segregation, she shared details about a home defined by instability, fear and an ever-present sense that something terrible was coming.