Charlize's family trauma

At the time, the Therons both ran a road construction business. Although the family lived a very comfortable and affluent existence, the stress of managing the business affected Charles in particular.

Inevitably, however justifiable Gerda's actions, the shooting and the ensuing trauma ripped the family apart. Charles's own family - sympathetic to Gerda but devastated nonetheless by his loss - never fully recovered.

"There was, and still is, a grudge in the family," Hennie says. "Charlize and her mother left South Africa shortly after the killing, and that was the last time any of us saw them. Only two days before they left, we had a party for them, so everything was left on good terms, but we were never to hear from then again. Now, we simply want to make things right."

Charlize was only 16 when her mother shot her father at the family home in Benino, near Johannesburg, Yesterday, Charlize's aunt Martie - who is married to Gerda's brother Philip - spoke for the first time about the appalling night when the then young girl watched the fatal argument.

"Charles was a good man," she tells me, "but when he had had a drink, something happened inside of him. On the night he was killed, Charlize and her mother had to hide in Charlize's bedroom just to get away from him. It was absolutely terrifying for both of them."

Martie recalls in dramatic fashion how mother and daughter genuinely feared for their lives as Charles, increasingly uncontrollable and fuelled by alcohol , hunted them through their suburban bungalow.

"You can only imagine the sheer terror as they cowered in that bedroom-barricaded in, and the whole time all that Charlize's mother could think about was that she had to protect her daughter, however she could. She grabbed a gun in the house and, accidentally, it went off and he was killed as they struggled. For all of us, all sides of the family, it was a terrible, most awful time.

"But Charlize and her mother have always been strong people and they have always been incredibly close and somehow they have managed to get through this and to get on with their lives."

Indeed, what is fascinating is how close this mother-daughter relationship really is, a bond cemented by the trauma they both witnessed. But her mother's ambition for her only child was there from the very beginning. "Her mother really is part of the double act with Charlize," Anel Honibal, a childhood friend, said yesterday. "Gerda is very strong-willed, kind but tough.

"In the time we were at school together for nearly seven years, whether it was a sports day or some cultural event which Charlize was part of, Gerda did not miss one event. Not one, she was always there for her daughter."

It is a quiet, shrewd determination which Gerda has passed on to Charlize. "From a very young age," says Anel, "Charlize was ambitious to the point that if she wanted something, she got it. Whether it was playing netball, studying English or wanting to be a model and actress, once she had set her heart on it, then she had to be the best. She was one of the most competitive people I've ever met."

She was also, in truth, something of a precocious, spoilt only child. "Charlize knew that she was the absolute centre of her parents' world," says Melise Etheridge, a family friend who taught Charlize to ride ponies at an equestrian centre only yards from the family home. "She revelled in attention, knew that she was pretty and always believed that she could achieve whatever she wanted."

In fact, her rise to Hollywood stardom, without detracting from her very definite talent as an actress, follows a somewhat predictable path, her father's violent death aside: with a determined mother convinced that there was more to offer her daughter than life in a small town, Charlize won her first modelling competition in South Africa when she was still a teenager.

Ironically, on the night her father was killed, the family were due to have accepted the award in a nearby town. "She was always posing in front of cameras," says Anel, "a bit of a show-off and she knew how to use her looks. I suppose you might call her mother pushy, and Charlize has inherited some of that as an only child."

Within a year or so, Gerda decided to leave South Africa. She first took Charlize to Milan, where she landed a number of lucrative modelling assignments, before deciding on a career as a ballet dancer. But that was not to last long; because of a childhood ankle injury, ballet was never a reasonable option. So it was, unemployed but still consumed with ambition, that she arrived in Hollywood as a 21-year-old.

The Charlize Theron publicity machine has it that she was first discovered in a bank. When a cashier refused to cash a cheque her mother had sent her, Charlize is said to have thrown a tantrum - and to have been spotted by celebrity agent, John Cosby. She made her film debut alongside James Spader and Jeff Daniels in Two Days in the Valley before gaining wider prominence in The Devil's Advocate with Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves.

Today, given her Oscars success, Theron can now demand as much as £5 million for any new film projects. Within 24 hours of her triumph, Variety magazine was tipping her as "a new legend", her future almost assured.

What is certain is that the woman who made all this possible - the mother who literally put her own life on the line to protect her daughter - will justifiably be sharing in her daughter's phenomenal rise to superstardom. Few can begrudge either of them that.

On Sunday night, as Charlize battled to control her emotions during her acceptance speech, she announced that she and her Oscar would be back in South Africa very soon: for her, it will be a triumphant and emotional return to a country she has not seen in some time.

For her father's family, her visit will, nonetheless, be equally emotional. It might be easy to dismiss their plea for Charlize to get in touch as mere griping or envy; but they seem genuinely not to wish to cash in on their links to Hollywood's latest star.

In 10 days' time, Hennie Theron tells me that he will drive to Johannesburg and stand on the pavement as Charlize and her mother are due to arrive at a celebrity dinner in her honour. "I just hope she might see me in the crowd and then we can take it from there," he says simply.

But with his cousin blinded by the bright lights of stardom, in truth he knows that more than likely, she will just sweep on by.