Charlize Theron says her kids won’t get a free ride in Hollywood: They need to ‘earn it’

Charlize Theron is making it clear her children won’t be growing up with a Hollywood safety net.

During a candid conversation, the Oscar-winning actress shared her approach to parenting, revealing she plans to instill independence and a strong work ethic in her daughters from an early age.

"First of all, your first car is going to be a Datsun because you're going to crash it," Theron said bluntly on the "Therapuss with Jake Shane" podcast. "You're going to f--k 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."

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Theron emphasized that financial independence would be a non-negotiable for her kids.

"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 life," she said.

When asked if her daughters would have summer jobs, she didn’t hesitate.

"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 6 a.m., like start getting ready for it."

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The actress, who adopted her daughters Jackson, 12, in 2012 and August, 9, in 2015, has long been open about raising her children as a single mother — a decision she’s described as deeply intentional.

In a July 2025 interview with Alex Cooper on the popular podcast "Call Her Daddy," Theron called her choice "one of the healthiest decisions I ever made."

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"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,'" she said.

Theron didn’t hold back when describing the freedom she’s found in motherhood on her own terms.

"I look at them and just be like, 'Do you know how f---ing great it is to live exactly how I want to live, to experience motherhood exactly how I wanted to experience it?'"

She added that she "love[s] that I don't have to run every f------ thing by a guy" or deal with co-parenting challenges, noting that she feels she has "broke the cycle."