Charlize: Seeing my mother kill my father inspires latest Hollywood role

CHARLIZE THERON’S dark childhood memories of watching her mother kill her father are helping to inspire her latest Hollywood role.

Charlize Theron's family

She stars in Dark Places as a woman left traumatised after witnessing the slaughter of her family. The film is based on a novel by Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn and has striking similarities to Theron’s early life in South Africa.

When she was 15, the actress watched as her mother shot dead her drunken father in self-defence. No charges were brought.

“There’s definitely an acknowledgement on my part that I had a very traumatic experience, an event, in my life and somehow it’s formed me,” she said in a recent interview.

Charlize Theron Capital

Charlize Theron in her new film Dark Places
It really is examining what a trauma like that would do to a child, especially when she’s expected to speak about it. And that’s something that I can relate to, that’s definitely something that I’ve experienced in my life.”

The 39-year-old has rarely spoken about her personal tragedy since revealing it in an interview a decade ago.

It was in 1991 that her mother Gerda shot dead her alcoholic husband Charles at the family farm near Johannesburg.

Charlize, who is the face of Dior’s J’adore perfume, is engaged to actor Sean Penn, 54.