There was a respect for nature that I was taught at a very young age. It was just the three of us, and we were real farmers [in Benoni, South Africa]. We never bought from butchers or anything, and whatever we would do would last us a year. It was the circle of life, which I’ve always loved about farm life.

I think when you say “farmer” or “farm community,” you think of a naive, Daisy Duke kind of character. But you can come from that environment and have a great deal of culture and intelligence. It wasn’t like I sat in on every conversation, but we read newspapers and knew what was going on in the world.

I always felt like I had a partnership with my mother, and that I never had to rebel against anything. There was a certain amount of responsibility that was given to me as a gift: “You’re smart, use that; be your own person, go explore, go and live a complete, full life.”

And there was a certain amount of discipline that came with the way I was raised. You didn’t break things that were not yours; you didn’t wreck a room. My mom and I watch this Nanny 911 show together, and I said to her, “I’m so calling the authorities on you for how you raised me.” Then I think about it and I’ve just got to say, there was a boundary that always made me feel safe. I really always knew from a very, very early age—that’s wrong and don’t you ever do that again. And God, I was spanked. I was more than spanked—I was whipped. Definitely. [With] whatever was around.

I went to school one time with Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse engraved in welts on my thighs from a hanger that my mom grabbed that had all these little Disney cartoons cut out in it. It boiled down to respect—my mom was taking care of everything and running a business at the same time and there were never any nannies or anything like that. She was doing laundry and cooking three meals a day and—I remember it so vividly, I came home from school, and she said, “Change your uniform before you have lunch.” And I was like, “Oh, I’ll just take a quick bite of this tomato soup.” And I drizzled it all over. She was busy ironing, and she had all the hangers stacked up. It was so quick—a couple of swipes on the thighs. I remember going to school and showing off my war wounds to my friends.

I think that that’s different than beating a child, which shouldn’t happen, or spanking a child unnecessarily. But let me tell you, at that age I knew I was wrong—because I was for sure not washing my own clothes; my mom was doing that. Then look at the relationship I have with her today. That’s a testament for my whole argument right there.

[When Theron was 15, her mother shot and killed her father, who was physically threatening them.] It’s really fascinating to see what people will do when they have to make a split-second decision that could change everything in their lives. You start to realize that you were just really blessed and lucky to have somebody like my mom who made that decision, and it did save our lives. But it happens all the time, and it just depends on where you are in your life. And how much you’re willing to fight to live.

When I did the promotion for Monster, everybody was saying, “I can’t imagine. . . . ” And I was thinking, “Really? Really, if you were in those circumstances, you can’t imagine?” It’s so hard for people to see themselves doing something as horrible as [serial killer] Aileen Wuornos did. It’s so easy for us to say, “Oh, God, I can’t imagine.” But if you do imagine it and get yourself to that place, I think anybody is capable of doing anything. And capable of surviving anything.