Charlize Theron recalls night her mother killed her father
Charlize Theron was born on August 7, 1975, in Benoni, South Africa, into a prominent Afrikaner family. Her ancestry traces back to Dutch, French, and German settlers, with her French ancestors being among the early Huguenots in South Africa.
Her father, Charles Theron, and mother, Gerda Maritz, worked in road construction, but her family history goes far beyond that — she is even related to Danie Theron, a well-known military leader from the Second Boer War.
While Theron is fluent in English today, her first language is Afrikaans. And though she would one day take Hollywood by storm, her early life in South Africa was shaped by both privilege and unimaginable hardship.
Why she was bullied in school
Growing up, Charlize Theron was the girl who never quite fit in, especially when it came to the boys.
“I wore really nerdy glasses because I was blind as could be and the boys didn’t like [me],” she revealed in a recent interview with PEOPLE in New York. “I didn’t have any boyfriends, but lots of crushes.”
She was ignored by a boy she liked, and though she longed to be part of the popular crowd, she ended up doing some “crazy things” in an attempt to fit in.
“I wasn’t in the popular crowd. There was a really popular girl at school and I was obsessed with her. I mean, you would go to jail for that stuff today,” Theron says with a laugh. “I was in tears one day because I couldn’t sit next to her.”
“I actually got a lot of the mean girl stuff from the ages of 7 to 12. I was Continue reading…
