Putting herself first! Charlize Theron isn’t bothered by her single status — and doesn’t think anybody else should be either.
The South Africa native previously dated Trapped costar Stuart Townsend from 2001 to 2010 and moved on with Sean Penn three years later. Theron and the Milk actor were rumored to be engaged in December 2014 but their romance came to an end six months later.
“There is a need to sensationalize things,” the Bombshell actress later told WSJ magazine after splitting from Penn. “We were in a relationship and then it didn’t work anymore. And we both decided to separate. That’s it.”
Five years after calling it quits from the Into the Wild director, Theron set the record straight about the status of their relationship.
“No. I did not ‘almost get married to Sean.’ That’s such bulls–t. We dated. That was literally all we did,” she explained on The Howard Stern Show in June 2020 after Howard Stern implied that Penn had proposed. “We dated and then we didn’t date. … I wasn’t gonna marry him. It was nothing like that.”
Though she’s never settled down, Theron has adopted two children: Jackson in March 2012 and August in July 2015. She told Stern that she’s “never been lonely” because she already gets to spend each day raising the “great loves” of her life. Marriage has “never been something that’s important to me,” she asserted.
While the Long Shot star is completely comfortable on her own, she’s taught her children that they should never feel pressured to start a relationship or get married because of societal expectations.
“We are raising a generation of young girls who realize that there is absolutely no shame in that game to be in relationship with yourself— to not fall into what society kind of predicts for us as what is socially acceptable: If you are not in a relationship, somehow you’re a failure,” Theron said during a July 2020 episode of the “InCharge with DVF” podcast. “Those are all constructs that we need to change.”
Scroll down to read more of Theron’s most empowering statements about her single status.