It’s easy to watch Charlize Theron on the red carpet and think, “She has no idea what it’s like to wipe up baby puke.” But as a single parent of Jackson, 6, and August, 2, the Oscar winner’s life is anything but mess free.
“Raising kids is not through rose-colored lenses. There is real grit to it,” the 42-year-old actress told Us Weekly and other reporters at the Wednesday, April 18, Tully premiere in L.A.
Theron, who plays an exhausted, suburban mom in the Jason Reitman-directed drama, looked glamorous in a Dior gown with butterfly embellishments. By Theron’s side: her mom, Gerda Maritz, who is helping the star raise her children. (Maritz lives just up the street from her famous daughter!)
“I think every piece of advice has been really good from my mom. She’s like, ‘You know, what, tomorrow is going to be a new day. It’s not the end of the world,’” Theron revealed. “Sometimes I lose my mind especially in a car, like when we’re on a road trip or something. She’ll look at me and laugh . . . Then she’ll say, ‘It’s just a moment. It’s going to pass. It’s going to pass.’”
Theron finds tremendous comfort in Maritz: “It’s really good to hear that when you’re in the middle of it.”
The South African native opened up on Tuesday about gaining “close to 50 pounds” for Tully. “I would literally wake up at two in the morning and I’d have a cup of cold macaronie and cheese just next to me,” she recalled while speaking to Entertainment Tonight. “I would wake up and I would just eat it. I would just, like, shove it in my throat.”
Jackson and August were convinced the bigger tummy meant a brother or sister was on the way. “My kids still refer to this movie as the movie where mommy had a big belly,” she quipped. “There’s nothing fun about that.”
With reporting by Nicholas White.
