You learn to deal with it.'īetty Sue would insult her children, needling them with comments that would tear them down, including calling Depp's sister by the name of her grandmother who Betty Sue was well-known to despise. 'The physical pain, you learn to deal with. The beatings were just physical pain,' the actor added.
'The verbal abuse, the psychological abuse, was almost worse than the beatings. He left the family in 1978 and told Johnny - then 15 years-old - 'You're the man now'īut Depp said that his mother's physical attacks were easy to handle compared to the psychological abuse she filled their home with. 'She could become quite violent, and she was quite violent, and she was quite cruel,' Depp said, chuckling at the memory of his mother's beatings, 'There was physical abuse, certainly, which could be in the form of an ash tray being flung at you, or you'd get beat with a high heeled shoe, or a telephone, or whatever's handy.'ĭepp's father, John Depp, supported the family as a civil engineer. She'd walked past, you'd shield yourself because you didn't know what would happen,' Depp said. Throughout those years Depp said the abuse from his mother was constant, unpredictable, and nobody in the house - not even his father - was spared. The family moved from Kentucky to Florida when Depp was seven years-old, where they lived in a motel for nearly a year before John Depp found a job. 'My mom, her feet were on fire, and she had to move, so we moved constantly,' Depp testified, 'So you were always the new kid, and that wasn't ever particularly pleasant.' The family moved frequently throughout Depp's childhood due to his mother's restless nature. He began experimenting with drugs after stealing 'nerve pills' from his mother as a teenagerĪSHTRAYS AND INSULTS: A VIOLENT AND VOLATILE CHILDHOODĭepp, 58, was born on June 9, 1963, in Owensboro, Kentucky, the youngest of four to parents Betty Sue Palmer and John Christopher Depp.ĭepp's father was a civil engineer and his mother worked as a waitress. One that I thought was normal until a certain age,' Depp said.ĭepp detailed his struggles with substance abuse and recovery during testimony on April 20. She had the ability to be as cruel as anyone can be with all of us,'ĭepp testified that the violent home life he was brought up in taught him to never recreate the same kind of abuse in his own home later in life. 'In our house we were never exposed to any type of safety or security, the only thing to do was stay out of the line of fire,' he told lawyers from the stand. Speaking in a low voice Depp gave a measured but vivid description of what it was like living in a home where he, his three siblings, and his father were terrorized by his volatile and violent mother.
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The Pirates of the Caribbean star detailed a childhood defined by abuse at the hands of his mother when he took the stand in his $100 million defamation trial against ex-wife Amber Heard on Tuesday. His privileged life as an A-lister is a world away from his troubled upbringing as a high school dropout with an abusive and suicidal mother, but now Johnny Depp is telling the whole world how he went from small town Kentucky to Hollywood.