Charlize Theron Reliving History

Reporters feel obliged to ask actors about how they personally relate to the character in their current movie and actors feel obliged to make up some bullshit answer. Everybody has to pretend that making movies is not simply pretend. That would make both sides seem slightly less important. For her new movie about a girl traumatized from witnessing her family being slaughtered, Charlize Theron had a pretty good kicker. Her mom shot her dad to death when Charlize was a teen after abusive alcoholic dad started roaming the house drunk with his shotgun firing off rounds and threatening to kill his family.

“As far as events go, they’re very similar. There’s a murder [in the film], while my situation was a very unfortunate incident with self-defense.”

Good on Charlize to stick to that self-defense line they all agreed on in the house that night watching asshole dad bleed out. Given that she’s now serious with a guy who used to get drunk and beat on his wife, Charlize Theron has taken precautions to ensure Sean Penn won’t be able to shoot her or her suddenly appearing African baby. Theron asked Penn to give up his gun collection. Penn agreed, declaring the ugliness of guns and insisting he was going to “render inactive all of my cowardly killing machines.” Penn had 65 guns in the house. That’s a shitload of cowardice. You know he held on to one. Fortunately Charlize knows what to do when the time comes.

Photo credit: Getty Images