Charlize Theron Supports and Will Protect Her Trans Child

Actress Charlize Theron confirmed her seven-year-old child, Jackson, is transgender, after being approached by The Daily Mail.

"Yes, I thought she was a boy, too. Until she looked at me when she was three years old and said, 'I am not a boy!" Theron said. "So there you go! I have two beautiful daughters who, just like any parent, I want to protect and I want to see thrive."

A fierce LGBTQ ally, Theron adopted Jackson and her three-year-old sister, August, as infants.

"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," Theron told The Daily Mail.

"And I will do everything in my power for my kids to have that right and to be protected within that."

Theron has a long history of activism around LGBTQ causes that includes helping her mom drive AIDS patients to the hospital in her native South Africa when she was young. For years she refused to marry her then-boyfriend Stuart Townsend until marriage equality became the law of the land. Beyond that, Theron has contributed to representation, playing queer in Tully, Atomic Blond, Head in the Clouds, and Monster. Her new comedy, Long Shot, in which she plays the secretary of State to Seth Rogen's speechwriter, drops in theaters May 3.