Johnny Depp says he’s grateful to his late mom who beat him with shoe: ‘Taught me how not to raise kids’
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Johnny Depp is opening up about the painful lessons from his childhood and how they shaped the way he raised his own children.
The actor reflected on his troubled upbringing in a new interview and shared how he chose to break the cycle of abuse within his own family.
Johnny Depp says his mother beat him with 'a stick, a shoe, an ashtray, a phone'
In an interview with The Telegraph, Johnny Depp revealed that his mother, Betty Sue Palmer, was physically abusive when he was growing up.
“She beat me with a f*****g stick, a f*****g shoe, an ashtray, a phone, it didn’t matter, man,” Depp said.
“But I thank her for that. She taught me how not to raise kids. Just do the exact opposite of what she did," 'The Lone Ranger' actor said.
Palmer died in 2016 at the age of 81. Depp, 62, shares daughter Lily-Rose, 26, and son Jack, 23, with ex-partner Vanessa Paradis. Despite their past, Depp maintained a close relationship with Palmer later in life.
Johnny Depp shares painful memories of navigating a violent and chaotic home life
Depp first spoke publicly about the abuse during his 2022 defamation trial against ex-wife Amber Heard. Johnny Depp told the court his mother was “violent” and “cruel,” and that he would do his best to avoid triggering her anger.
“The verbal abuse, the psychological abuse, was almost worse than the beatings,” Depp testified. “The beatings were just physical pain. The physical pain, you learn to deal with. You learn to accept it. You learn to deal with it.”
He said Palmer often threw items like ashtrays, high-heeled shoes, or telephones at her children. She would hit them in the head and, according to Depp, “had the ability to be as cruel as anyone can be.”
Johnny Depp says his father never reacted to abuse from Betty Sue Palmer
Johnny Depp also described how his father, John Christopher Depp, handled Betty Sue Palmer’s outbursts.
“And when Betty Sue, my mother, would go off on a tangent toward my father, and of course, in front of the kids, it [didn't] matter to her, he, amazingly, remained very stoic and never, as she was rationing him with horrible things, he stood there and just looked at her while she delivered the pain, and he swallowed it. He took it,” said Depp.
Depp’s sister, Christi Dembrowski, also testified during the trial, recalling that Palmer “would hit us. She would throw things.” When asked if Depp ever retaliated, she responded, “He never went to that place.”
“Really early on as a young child,” Dembrowski said, “None of what was happening in our home felt good. And so, as I got older, both Johnny and I actually, we decided that once we left, once we had our own home, we were never going to repeat, ever, anything similar in any way to our childhood. We were gonna do it different.”
She added that Palmer “softened” in her later years and passed away in May 2016, just days before Amber Heard filed for divorce from Depp.
