Charlize Theron Talks About The Fight Against AIDS
Charlize Theron stopped by the Today show to speak about a very important cause. Theron wants to bring attention to the HIV and AIDS epidemic in Africa.
Theron has an organization that deals with aiding African youth to keep safe from HIV infections. The organization is called Charlize Theron Africa Outreach project. While she was on the Today show, Theron brought awareness that girls in South Africa, where she was born and raised, are “eight times more likely than boys to become HIV-positive.”
Charlize Theron: ‘We’ve become complacent’ about AIDS http://t.co/bZvM0EV6f4 pic.twitter.com/iT8mLeOAH4
— South Africa Trends (@SATrending) September 28, 2015
While on the show, Theron detailed her own experience growing up in South Africa and seeing the people affected by HIV and AIDS. “In South Africa, when I was growing up in the late ’80s and early ’90s – when the epidemic really hit and we had very little information on it – I remember being a young girl growing up with this petrifying fear because people were dying and nobody knew why.”
She continued, “Today we know why, and it’s completely preventable, and yet more young girls are dying today than 20 years ago and something is wrong with that.” Theron started the organization back in 2008 as an aid grassroots in teaching youth in Africa about HIV prevention. The reason why she didn’t focus on immediate care is because Theron said that AIDS will just continue until individuals are supported with the education to prevent it from happening altogether.
Charlize Theron: ‘We’ve become complacent’ about AIDS http://t.co/bZvM0EV6f4 pic.twitter.com/iT8mLeOAH4
— South Africa Trends (@SATrending) September 28, 2015
Her suggestion? Is to not just cure AIDS but to eliminate the disease completely. “This is an infectious disease, you can’t curb that. We have to stop it. We have to eliminate it completely.”
The last we heard from Charlize Theron is while she was promoting The Huntman. To say that Charlize has had a difficult life is putting it very lightly. Theron suffered from a violent past at a very young age. Growing up in a house with domestic violence lead to her mother shooting her father, and killing him, after having enough of his abuse. Although Theron’s life is a far cry from her childhood, Theron still relates to her dark times and knows that life can hold its own struggles — probably because of the way she grew up.
“I don’t think that life is that happy in general. It’s always going to be a struggle and you have to hang on to those moments where the world seem wonderful rather than grin.”
Instead, she said that she handles trouble by having a sense of humor about things, and not taking things so seriously.
As for her personal life, Theron cut her ex Sean Penn completely off once they returned from the Cannes Film Festival this year. The two seemed happy as ever at the festival, but for reasons no one could pin down, Theron iced Penn out of her life with allegedly no explanation. Despite that, the two will have to be on friendly terms eventually as Penn directed her in an upcoming film called The Last Face. That said, she did have a recent joy in her life, as she just adopted her second child, a baby girl.
Back in August it was reported that she adopted an African American girl who was born in the United States. She adopted a girl in July and decided to name her August. Theron also has a son named Jackson, who she adopted in 2012.
Back when she adopted Jackson, she opened up to British Vogue saying that she was always open about wanting a family. Theron dated actor Stuart Townsend in 2001, and the two separated in 2010. Recently, it was rumored that she’s dating actor Jake Gyllenhaal, but neither has commented on the report from HollywoodLife.
[Photo JP Yim / Getty Images]
