Charlize Theron declares her kids will have to work for a living despite her £151million fortune
Charlize Theron has outlined a firm parenting approach centred on financial independence, saying her children will be expected to work and earn their own way rather than rely on her success.
Charlize Theron has declared she will not provide her children with a financial safety net.
The Oscar-winning star of Monster and action franchises including Mad Max: Fury Road, 49 – who is worth an estimated £151 million – also insisted her kids will need to work for their own independence.
Charlize, who has built a career spanning prestige drama and blockbuster cinema, including roles in Atomic Blonde and The Italian Job, made the remarks during an appearance on the Therapuss with Jake Shane podcast about her adopted daughters Jackson, 12, and August, nine.
The A-lister, who has spoken extensively about raising them as a single mother, outlined her approach to parenting as focused on independence and work ethic by saying: “First of all, your first car is going to be a Datsun because you’re going to crash it.”
She added: “You’re going to f*** it up somehow. You’re a new driver. So, we’re not getting, like, the nice car up front. We need a little bit of experience, and we’re going to earn it.”
Charlize also addressed the question of financial support for her kids.
She added: “It’s too soon to kind of say where they’re going to end up … they just need to get a job that pays them because I don’t want to support them for the rest of (my) life.”
Referring to the idea of early work experience for her kids, she added: “Yeah. Every time we go to Starbucks, I’m like, ‘Look at this… do you see how friendly? You have to be that friendly every morning at 6am, like start getting ready for it’.”
Her comments follow previous interviews in which Charlize has discussed her decision to raise her children independently.
In a July 2025 appearance on Call Her Daddy with Alex Cooper she described the choice as deliberate.
She said: “With women, it’s always, like, ‘Something must be wrong with her’. “She can’t keep a man, and it’s never part of the discussion of like, ‘Wow. She’s really living her truth.’”
Charlize also spoke about the autonomy she feels in her personal life.
She said: “I look at (my children) and just be like, ‘Do you know how f****** great it is to live exactly how I want to live, to experience motherhood exactly how I wanted to experience it?’”
She added: “I love that I don’t have to run every f****** thing by a guy” and said she felt she had “broke the cycle.”
Charlize recently made global headlines by opening up about how her mother, Gerda, killed her alcoholic and abusive father in 1991, stating that her mum saved their lives and saying she is not ashamed to talk about it.
She described the incident – which saw her mother shoot her dad – as a justified act of self-defense after he came home drunk and launched into violent threats.
