Charlize Theron Didn’t Ghost Sean Penn, Doesn’t Even Know What Ghosting Is

Charlize Theron with Sean Penn in July 2014. (Photo: Getty Images)

Charlize Theron doesn’t mess around. Ever. When she wanted to be an actress, she moved to Los Angeles and lived out of a suitcase to make that dream happen. When she wanted to be a mother, she adopted two children, on her own. And when she and Sean Penn realized their relationship had run its course, they ended it, together — but she definitely did not ghost him. In fact, she claims not to even know what that term means.

The A-list couple began dating in 2013, though they’d known each other socially for years, and got engaged in 2014. Though she already had one child, Jackson, at the time, Theron says she was upfront about her plans to grow her family and didn’t make any attempts to soft-pedal that fact from Penn. “I always knew I wanted more kids,” the 40-year-old actress told the Wall Street Journal in her first interview discussing their breakup. “I always knew I wanted more than one. Always.”

It seemed that the 54-year-old actor wasn’t remotely scared off by this possibility. “When you’re with somebody and it comes to kids, you can’t bulls**t,” Theron explained. “And so I was always very honest with Sean that I wanted to have more kids. And he was very supportive.”

Photo: Wall Street Journal Magazine

But that doesn’t mean Penn was ready to be Jackson’s father. “We were very, very new in a relationship,” Theron said. “The stories saying that Sean was going to adopt Jackson and all of that were not true. It’s not something that happens in 18 months. You can’t do that to a child.”

Instead, she said they worked out some clearly defined boundaries. “There was an understanding that I was a single mom with a very young boy who I had to put in a situation where he understood that Mommy dates but that he does not have a father,” she explained. “You have to be very careful and very honest about that stuff. And Sean was great with all of that.”

However, the Huntsman star admitted that talking about her hopes for a bigger family did, in itself, contain some weight. “In my honesty about wanting to have more kids, there was an understanding that a relationship had to go somewhere before it was going to be — what you hope for,” she explained, before adding, “which ultimately did not happen.”

As for their split, Theron — who broke down in tears twice during the interview — admitted she “couldn’t foresee that,” but reasoned, “that stuff takes time.” At the end of the day, her priority was her child. “I think it’s my responsibility as a mother to protect my child from that. And so we had a very clear understanding. [Penn] knew that I was thinking about filing for another adoption but that we weren’t filing it together.” After their split, Theron adopted a second child, a girl named August.

It sounded like they were the perfect couple, so what could have gone wrong? Theron pretty much chalks it up to the relationship simply not working anymore, rather than any dramatic moment or event. “There is this need to sensationalize things,” she said. “When you leave a relationship, there has to be some f**king crazy story or some crazy drama.” Specifically, she addressed the allegations that she had ghosted her former fiancé.

“And the f**king ghosting thing, like literally I still don’t even know what it is,” she said with a shrug. “It’s just it’s own beast. We were in a relationship, and then it didn’t work anymore. And we both decided to separate. That’s it.”