Charlize Theron Benefited from “White Privilege”

Oscar-winning actress Charlize Theron said she was a “white person who benefited from my white privilege” whilst growing up in South Africa.

She made the comment whilst speaking on stage alongside ‘Gringo’ co-star David Oyelowo at the annual fundraiser for a Nigerian children’s educational and health charity, GEANCO, at the SLS Hotel Beverley Hills in Los Angeles on Thursday.

“I grew up during the Apartheid era, I benefited from it.  These children [today] were all born post-Apartheid era.  I feel like it’s my duty not to let them forget and also let them know that there is [unity], that I am with them, that we are all standing together”, she said.

She went on to explain that “[a] lot of the places where we support grassroots organisations, who are the highest affected when it comes to AIDS and HIV in South Africa, are, I think it’s a no-brainer, very rural communities”.

Theron was born in 1975 in Benoni, in what was then Transvaal Province, into an Afrikaner family.

Despite admitting to her white privilege, the actress had a particularly tough upbringing.  In 1991, when she was aged just 16, her alcoholic father attempted to shoot both her and her mother.  In order to protect herself and her daughter, Theron’s mother shot and killed him.

She would go on to stardom in Hollywood, winning an Oscar for her 2003 performance as notorious American serial killer Aileen Wuornos in the biopic ‘Monster’.