Oscar-winning actress Charlize Theron says in a new interview that she knew her oldest child was transgender at age three – because the child said so.
The 43-year-old actress is known for her roles in The Fate of the Furious, The Huntsman: Winter's War and Kubo and the Two Strings, and won an Oscar for the 2003 film Monster.
Theron adopted a biological boy, Jackson, in 2012. But soon, she says, the child made known that he didn’t want to be identified that way.
“Yes, I thought she was a boy, too,” Theron told the Daily Mail newspaper. “Until she looked at me when she was three years old and said: ‘I am not a boy!’ So there you go! I have two beautiful daughters who, just like any parent, I want to protect and I want to see thrive.”
Jackson is now seven. Theron also has a three-year-old daughter, August.
“They were born who they are and exactly where in the world both of them get to find themselves as they grow up, and who they want to be, is not for me to decide. My job as a parent is to celebrate them and to love them and to make sure that they have everything they need in order to be what they want to be.”
She stands by her decision to raise Jackson as a transgender girl.
“I will do everything in my power for my kids to have that right and to be protected within that,” she said.
Related:
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Michael Foust is a freelance writer. Visit his blog, MichaelFoust.com.
Photo courtesy: Getty Images/Matt Winkelmeyer/Staff
