Charlize Theron knows the importance of being honest and open with her children. The 44-year-old Oscar winner spoke about talking to her two daughters, Jackson and August, about Black Lives Matter while chatting with Jimmy Fallon on Monday’s The Tonight Show.
“The day I became a parent, I vowed that I would always tell them the truth in a way that they could handle. I feel that this is such an important moment for them, for all us,” Theron expressed. “They have an awareness — they’re not — I think we forget how aware sometimes our kids are. I wanted them to know what this was all about, what happened to George Floyd and to so many other Black bodies that have died from this violence. I wanted them to have an awareness of how unfair and how unjust all of this is.”
“I know that there’s a part in telling them some of that ugliness about the world that would make them grow up a little bit faster than they should have or would have normally during this period. I think this is too important of a moment to not be completely transparent,” she continued. “They handled it really well. I think it was heartbreaking at first. They couldn’t understand that people would let something like that happen. I’m getting emotional just thinking about it.”
The Old Guard star reflected, adding, “That is really ultimately what it is. How do we allow anything like this to happen on our watch? They really wanted to be proactive and really wanted to know, what can we do?”
She shared that her daughters wanted to be active in protesting and making signs and wanting to go to the marches. “The other side of this, that I have seen them come around and become — they’ve really grown from it. They’ve become little warriors in their own right. I can take no credit for it.”
Last month, Theron also opened up to 360aproko about raising two Black children and having “hard, honest conversations” with them about the current climate.
“As a parent, it’s been a difficult time. I think all parents, we want to believe we have time. And the world has kind of shaken me in a way that I realize that I don’t have time,” she expressed. “There was a moment where I felt like a little piece of my children’s innocence was taken from them during this period because I had to sit down with them and have really, really hard, honest conversations about some really ugly things in our world today that they need to know. I want them to know because I want to raise two little warriors.”
Theron added that she’s already seen her children grow from this moment in time.
