Ghosting or not, Charlize Theron is finally confronting her split from Sean Penn. The Huntsman: Winter’s War actress got emotional as she opened up to WSJ Magazine in its April 2016 issue about her 18-month relationship with Penn — and their subsequent breakup last summer.
“We were very, very new in a relationship,” the South African native, 40, told the mag. “There was an understanding that I was a single mom with a very young boy who I had to put in a situation where he understood that Mommy dates but that he does not have a father, you know what I mean? You have to be very careful and very honest about that stuff. And Sean was great with all of that.”
The longtime friends, both Oscar winners, went public with their relationship in December 2013, and were instantly inseparable. A year later, as Us Weekly first revealed, they were secretly engaged. Theron developed a friendly relationship with the actor’s 24-year-old daughter, model-actress Dylan Penn — the two still keep in touch — and Penn got close to her son, Jackson, now 4, which was another situation she addressed with WSJ.
“In my honesty about wanting to have more kids, there was an understanding that a relationship had to go somewhere before it was going to be — what you hope for, which ultimately did not happen,” she reflected of their failed romance. “I couldn’t foresee that, but that stuff takes time and I think it’s my responsibility as a mother to protect my child from that. And we had a very clear understanding.”
Theron joked about divulging too much information about the breakup and even cried with the writer, Alex Bhattacharji. “My publicist’s going to kill me; I’m already saying too much,” Theron said. “She laughs again,” Bhattacharji notes, “and after a moment, another wave of tears arrives.”
In July 2015, the stars decided that their romance was over after a trip to the Cannes Film Festival. A source told Us Weekly at the time that Theron was the one to break things off.
“When you leave a relationship there has to be some f–ing crazy story or some crazy drama. And the f–ing ghosting thing, like literally, I still don’t even know what it is,” Theron said of icing him out after she broke things off. “It’s just its own beast. We were in a relationship and then it didn’t work anymore. And we both decided to separate. That’s it.”
WSJ noted that Penn declined to comment.
