NEWSCharlize Theron Calls Out Her Kids for Having 'Zero Respect' Toward Her
Charlize Theron's children are unfazed by her stardom.
May 9 2025, Published 3:53 p.m. ET
Charlize Theron isn't shy to admit her children's shortcomings.
The Mad Max actress, 49, confessed on a talk show appearance how her daughters, Jackson, 12, and August, 9, really feel about her career in the spotlight.
Charlize Theron's kids have no 'respect' for her.
"My children have zero respect for me," she told Jimmy Kimmel on the Thursday, May 8, episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!. "It’s just unbelievable, I feel like I’m pretty humble, but every once in a while I’m like ‘there’s a f------ Oscar right there.’ They are so not impressed with me."
Charlize revealed her youngest child is more impressed with another film icon: Tom Cruise.
"I was picking up my youngest from dance yesterday and we drove past the new Mission: Impossible poster where Tom Cruise is hanging onto some yellow plane, and he just looks really cool," she recalled.
Charlize Theron's Daughter Reacts to Her Fame
Charlize Theron said her kids are 'not impressed' by her.
She continued to recount her own action movie Old Guard 2, in which the mom worked on an "incredibly intricate sequence" with helicopter pilot Fred North.
"We were gonna choreograph this incredible me fighting helicopters and jumping on this real helicopter and hanging off," she described. "Shooting 99 percent of it on a real helicopter as it’s trying to shake me off like a rag doll."
- Angelina Jolie All Smiles With Kids Maddox and Zahara in Paris After Demanding 'Privacy' for Her Children: See Photos
- Angelina Jolie Admits Her 6 Kids 'Aren't Interested' in Acting Because They 'Really Don't Like' Being Famous: 'Shiloh Hates It'
- Angelina Jolie's 6 Children Are the 'Closest People' to Her as They 'Had to Heal' After Divorce From Brad Pitt
Want OK! each day? Sign up here!
Charlize Theron's kids do not want to inherit her Oscar.
The child remembered her mom's sequence as well but didn't think it measured up to Tom's photo.
"We took like two weeks to shoot this sequence, and I was like, ‘Wow, I just did that, that’s really amazing.’ And my child yesterday just looked at this poster of Tom Cruise and went, ‘It’s weird, he looks so much cooler than you did when you were hanging off the helicopter,'" Charlize explained. "I was just like, ‘I hung off the helicopter, [can I have] some credit?’"
Jimmy joked that whichever daughter is the most "enthusiastic" would get the Oscar passed down to her.
"They don’t want the Oscar," Charlize clarified, to which the host responded, "Oh, they’ll want that Oscar."
Charlize Theron's Tragic Past With Her Parents
Charlize Theron's mom killed her father.
Although the Bombshell alum has a close relationship with her kids, she suffered a traumatic childhood. Her mother, Gerda Maritz, shot and killed her father, Charles Theron, out of self-defense when he threatened them in 1991.
"My father was so drunk that he shouldn’t have been able to walk when he came into the house with a gun," she told an outlet in 2019. "My mom and I were in my bedroom leaning against the door because he was trying to push through the door."
Charles then shot through the door three times, with the bullets luckily missing Charlize and Gerda.
"I only knew him one way, and that was as an alcoholic," the actress admitted. "It was a pretty hopeless situation. Our family was just kind of stuck in it."
