‘I'M REALLY HAPPY BEING SINGLE'

BACK TO KICK ASS ON OUR TV SCREENS CHARLIZE THERON REVEALS HER SOFT SIDE AS SHE TALKS ABOUT FAMILY LIFE AND HER PASSION FOR GENDER EQUALITY

- ALAN TANNER

With her model looks, Oscar-winning talent and razor sharp mind, it’s hard to fathom how Charlize Theron has remained, according to the actress herself, single for over a decade. “Somebody just needs to grow a pair and step up. I’m shockingly available,” she jokes.

Charlize quashed rumours of a romance with Brad Pitt last year and appears perfectly fulfilled with her career both behind and in front of the camera, her activism and her “empowering” role as single mum to two adopted girls.

Chatting from Los Angeles, where she’s quarantining with transgender daughter Jackson, eight, and August, four, she admits she’s struggled with lockdown but is grateful for her ever present mum Gerda Maritz.

“I knew I’d need to have my mom help me if I was going to do this as a single parent,” she has previously said of her family set-up. “To not acknowledge her in co-parenting would be a lie. I’m so lucky to have that.”

Her own childhood in South Africa was traumatic. When she was just 15, her mum shot and killed her alcoholic father after he fired bullets through the door of the room the pair were hiding in. “In self-defence, she ended the threat,” Charlize has since said, describing her dad as a “very sick man”.