Charlize Theron reached "rock bottom" in her early 30s.
The 38-year-old actress – whose mother killed her father in self-defense when she was 15 years old – "didn’t know" she needed therapy, but has found having regular sessions incredibly useful.
She said: "I didn’t know that I needed therapy. I was walking through life just kind of thinking everything was fine – you go and you work and there’s this catharsis that happens when you are an actor, and that’s healthy, right?
"[In my early 30s, I was] kind of at rock bottom. I called a friend and said, ‘Will you give me the number of your therapist?’ And I started seeing an incredible woman who is always just a phone call away."
The ‘Million Ways to Die in the West’ star adopted her two-year-old son Jackson in March 2012, and says taking on the care of a child is something she has always wanted to do, even when her then-boyfriend Stuart Townsend – who she split with in 2010 after almost nine years together – didn’t agree with her idea of what a "family" is.
Charlize’s mother recently showed her a letter which she wrote when she was eight years old that read: "What I want for Christmas this year is for you to take me to the orphanage so that we can adopt a brother or a sister."
Speaking about the note, the actress – who is now dating Sean Penn – told the new issue of Vogue magazine: "I don’t know where that came from.
"Maybe it was just an awareness of the fact that at that time, orphanages were everywhere in South Africa. But even in my relationship with Stuart, that was something I was very clear about. We had very different ideas of what a family looked like. There’s no judgment; that was not the reason why we broke up, but when we did, adopting was not a last resort for me – it was almost like a first resort. And it’s the only thing in my life that’s surpassed how great I thought it would be."
Charlize Theron hit ‘rock bottom’
