The loss of a loved one is never
easy, but losing a family member to violence is devastating… and for at least
one celebrity, it's pushed them into activism. In films like "Mad Max: Fury Road" and "Atomic
Blonde," Charlize Theron has fought against and dealt out jaw-dropping violence with
astonishing skill and gravitas. But the Oscar winner found herself in a real-life
fight for her life in her native South Africa, and one which ended with a familial
tragedy. In a 2019 interview with NPR, Theron recalled the violent impact of her
father's alcohol addiction on her family, stating, "It was a pretty hopeless situation." Her father's addiction issues left
them in a constant state of anxiety, wondering when it would bloom into physical
violence. That tension finally reached a boiling point when Theron was 15. Her father
threatened Theron and her mother with a gun, and even fired shots into a room where
they were hiding. The actor explained, "None of those bullets ever hit
us, which is just a miracle." To save herself and her daughter, Theron's mother
fired back with her own weapon, killing her husband. Charges were not filed because she had
acted in self-defense. Theron has spoken openly about the experience in hopes of supporting
others who might be in similar situations. "I'm not ashamed to talk about it, because
the more we do talk about these things, the more we realize we are
not alone in any of it." "No, it doesn't haunt me. No, it doesn't
haunt me at all. I'm completely at peace." More than one actor on this list
has lost multiple family members to violence. This includes
"Frasier" star Kelsey Grammer, whose father and sister were both homicide
victims. In a 2015 interview with Vanity Fair, Grammer said that their deaths, while painful,
also taught him a tough but valuable lesson. "Every one of us is going to experience some terrible loss. [...] I think you
come to look at it as part of life." Grammer's father, newspaper editor Allen
Grammer, was killed by taxi driver Arthur Bevan Niles outside his home in the U.S. Virgin
Islands in 1968. Niles was found not guilty of the crime by reason of insanity and spent decades
in a psychiatric ward. Less than a decade later, Grammer lost his younger sister, Karen,
to another mentally unstable criminal. Karen Grammer was just 18 years old in 1975 when
she was abducted by spree killer Freddie Glenn and three accomplices who robbed the restaurant
where she was employed in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The quartet sexually assaulted Grammer
before stating that they would return her home; however, Glenn, who was under the influence of
LSD, fatally stabbed Grammer and left her to die. Glenn was sentenced to death for
the murders of Grammer and two other people before Colorado abolished
capital punishment. Grammer's testimony about his sister's loss contributed to the
denial of parole for Glenn in 2009 and 2014. "You still miss her I can see. Yeah.
Yeah. Do you ever get over it? Uh, no." The runaway successes enjoyed by Jennifer
Hudson — she is the youngest woman ever to claim an EGOT — were sorely tempered by
a terrible family tragedy. One year after Hudson won her Academy Award for "Dreamgirls,"
her mother, Darnell Donerson, and brother, Jason Hudson, were both found dead from
gunshot wounds in Donerson's Chicago, Illinois, home on October 24, 2008. Hudson's
7-year-old nephew, Julian King, was also reported missing from Donerson's home. He was later found
dead from multiple gunshots in a stolen SUV. Police arrested King's father, William Balfour,
for the three murders. Balfour was the ex-husband of Hudson's sister, and reportedly killed her
mother and brother and kidnapped his son out of jealousy over an alleged new boyfriend.
Though Balfour protested that he had nothing to do with the killings, a jury found him guilty
of all three deaths, as well as charges of home invasion, aggravated kidnapping, residential
burglary, and possession of a stolen car. He was sentenced to three consecutive
life sentences plus 120 years. Hudson, who testified at the trial, later
established the Hudson-King Foundation, which provided care for families
who lost relatives to violent crime. While landing both critical acclaim and
box office success for films like "Poor Things" and "Spotlight" alongside his run as
The Hulk in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Mark Ruffalo has also dealt with
more than his share of personal tragedy. He's experienced dysthymia
— a constant low-grade depression, as well as a brain tumor that temporarily left him
with hearing loss and partial facial paralysis. "I had this crazy dream that I had a brain tumor." Ruffalo has also experienced personal loss
on two occasions: A close friend who died by suicide in 1994, and the shooting
death of his brother, Scott, in 2008. Scott Ruffalo died after he was shot in
the head in his Los Angeles home. Initially considered a case of self-inflicted injury,
Scott's death was later ruled a homicide, and police questioned Shaha Mishaael Adham,
who visited him shortly before his death, and her boyfriend, Brian Scofield. Adham
was briefly arrested but later released without any charges. She died in 2012,
leaving Scott's murder an unsolved case. For Mark Ruffalo, his brother's death
prompted a brief retirement from acting until returning for his Oscar-nominated turn
in "The Kids Are All Right." He later told the Telegraph that his performance in the
film was an homage to his late brother. In the Netflix limited series "Griselda,"
Sofia Vergara puts aside the Emmy-nominated comedy skills she displayed on "Modern Family"
and embraces darker, more dramatic material to play the notorious Colombian drug lord Griselda
Blanco. A fearsome presence in Miami from the 1970s through the early 2000s, Blanco ran her
criminal empire through cunning and brutality, an approach Vergara knew all too well following
the murder of her brother Rafael in 1998. Vergara's family oversaw a ranching operation
that provided cattle for the meat industry in her native Colombia. In a 2015 interview
with the New York Post, Vergara shared, "We come from a successful family, and
[Rafael] knew he was a target for kidnapping." Though frequently accompanied by bodyguards, Rafael chose to go out alone on one occasion
and was killed in a failed abduction attempt. His death devastated Vergara's family,
and out of an abundance of caution, she moved her mother and siblings to Miami after
she relocated there in 1994. As she told Parade, "With so many bad things happening, it
creates a tough skin. You just take a deep breath and keep on going — if not for
yourself, then for everybody you love." For years, Dylan McDermott believed that
his mother, Diane, died by suicide in 1967, when the Emmy-nominated star of "FBI: Most
Wanted" was just five years old. The medical examiner's ruling of accidental death was
accepted for more than four decades until a new investigation determined that Diane
McDermott was the victim of a homicide. In 2011, the Waterbury, Connecticut police
department found that the original investigation overlooked key details that would have connected
her then-boyfriend John Sponza to the murder. Sponza claimed that he had been cleaning his
gun at the time of Diane's death and stepped away to take a phone call. Though Sponza was
a known violent criminal with a history of abusing both McDermott and his mother,
his account was accepted at face value. Diane McDermott's autopsy later revealed
that not only was the gun pressed against the back of her head, dismissing the idea
that she had pulled the trigger herself, but that the caliber of the gun found near her
body did not match the weapon that killed her. The Waterbury police reported that there was enough
evidence to charge Sponza with murder. However, he was himself killed in 1972, allegedly after
double-crossing mobsters in Massachusetts. Actor/producer/director Ice Cube first made a name
for himself with the groundbreaking West Coast gangsta rap outfit N.W.A. The group's tracks
were frequently anchored around hard-hitting stories of life and death on the Los Angeles
streets. Ice Cube himself knew firsthand about gun violence. His half-sister was shot to death by
her husband when the rapper was just 12 years old. According to author Ben Westhoff in his 2016 book
"Original Gangstas: The Untold Story of Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Tupac Shakur and the Birth
of West Coast Rap," Ice Cube's half-sister, Beverly Jean Brown, was taken hostage by her
husband, Carl Clifford Brown, inside their South Central Los Angeles home. Police gained
entry and found Beverly dead by gunshot and Carl wounded. According to Ice Cube, Carl suffered
from mental health issues, and initially planned to kill Beverly and then himself. Carl
died from his injuries one month later. In a 2013 interview with HuffPost, Ice Cube said that his half-sister's
death remains fresh in his mind: "I think about my sister a lot. I think about the
turn of events that triggered that situation." A contributing factor to the
tragedy, according to him, was the lenient attitude towards and general
ease in obtaining guns in America. He said, "It's a sick love affair.
But it's just hard to break." Janelle Monáe has successfully added award-winning
actor to her list of laurels, which includes Grammy-nominated music artist, author, activist,
and fashion icon. Unfortunately, the "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery" star is also part of
a more exclusive but less desirable group: Family members of murder victims. Monáe's
cousin, Natasha Hays, was killed when an unknown assailant fired multiple shots at her
home in Kansas City, Kansas in August 2016. Hays, a caregiver, was killed by the spray of
gunfire while she slept, but her three children, ages 14 to 18, avoided injury. Family members
later told Kansas City's Fox 4 News that Hays had said she felt threatened by an unknown
individual in the days before the shooting. Monáe took to X, formerly known as Twitter,
to mourn her cousin's death, writing, "Nobody deserves to lose their
mother, sister, cousin, friend, etc to the hands of evil. Evil has no race." Later that same day, she posted again, writing, "Hearing your uncle on the phone
while he tries to make sense of his daughter being murdered is the
most helpless feeling in the world." Though she's best known as a chart-topping
and Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, Rihanna has also made forays into
acting in features and on television, with varying degrees of success. The Barbados
native also shares one other commonality with the other actors on this list: She lost
a family member to gun violence in 2017. Rihanna's cousin, Tavon Alleyne, was shot
multiple times and killed while walking near his home in St. Michael, Barbados on December
26, 2017. Ebony reported on January 4, 2018, that an alleged suspect had been apprehended; however,
the news was undoubtedly cold comfort for Rihanna, who had been celebrating the holidays with
Alleyne just a day before his murder. She posted a heartfelt tribute to him on her Instagram
page after learning of his death, writing, "RIP cousin... can't believe it was just
last night that I held you in my arms!" The senseless deaths of children and
adults in a school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee prompted Emmy-winning actor Niecy
Nash-Betts to share her own painful memory of her brother's death in a similar incident in
1993. The star posted a video on her TikTok account on March 27, 2023 — the same day as
the mass shooting at The Covenant School, which claimed the lives of three
students and three school staff members. A visibly emotional Nash-Betts expressed
her sorrow to the families of the victims, and recalled that her own brother, Michael Ensley, died in a school shooting three decades prior.
Just 17 at the time of his death on February 22, 1993, Ensley was shot and killed at
Reseda High School by a fellow teenager. After Ensley's death, Nash-Betts' mother,
Margaret Ensley founded Mothers Against Violence in Schools, also known as M.A.V.I.S., which lent
support and education in violence prevention to schools and parents. Nash, who is a spokesperson
for M.A.V.I.S., spoke out in favor of gun control. "Some political groups are so focused on the
wrong thing that our children are dying." If you or someone you know is
dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic
Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information,
resources, and support at their website. If you or anyone you know has
been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape,
Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National
Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
