Charlize Theron

That includes her experience growing up in a violent home in her native South Africa, her mother killing her father in self-defense, and the repercussions she's lived with ever since.

Here's my conversation with Charlize Theron.

So we're meeting the day after the Oscars, and I was watching your acceptance speech when you won your Oscar for Monster in 2004.

And, you know, you're standing on stage, you're tearing up.

It's clearly just this very important moment, which, of course, it is for any actor.

Your mom is sitting in the audience and you thank her for all her sacrifices, but

When you look back now, what do you think about that young woman and what was happening at that moment?

The first thing that came to mind was just, this is something that doesn't happen to girls in South Africa.

Like, you know, it's like, I remember looking at a map and I was like, God, we're all...

I remember like feeling very lucky that I made it out here.

And like my greatest dream, like my like lottery dream,

When would have been to be able to support myself as an actor and not have a second job?

Like that was literally what I was like aiming for.

Not just aiming for it.

Like that would have been, I just wanted to like be able to support myself, not depend on my mom or a guy, feel secure and get to do the thing that I absolutely love.

But the thing with my mom is very, I'm going to try and talk about it very professionally because I will tear up.

She did sacrifice a lot.

Yeah, and we're going to talk about that.

And you can tell just in that moment, you know, the connection, the just looking at each other.

Well, I couldn't look at her.