Charlize Theron rarely talks publicly about the night her mum killed her dad – a trauma that mired her youth for years to come – but now she’s done exactly that, in an effort to open up dialogue around family violence.

In a new interview with NPR, the Oscar-winning actor says she wants to encourage discussion around what it’s like to grow up with an addict.

Theron’s father was an abusive alcoholic, and her childhood in her native South Africa was scarred by his behaviour and the fallout from that.

“Our family was just kind of stuck in it,” she says. “And the day-to-day unpredictability of living with an addict is the thing that you sit with and have kind of embedded in your body for the rest of your life, more than just this one event of what happened one night.”

Charlize Theron is “not ashamed” to talk about the night her mum killed her dad in self-defence