Johnny Depp says abusive mom beat him with shoe, stick, and ashtray: ‘She showed me exactly what not to do as a parent'

Indian Express

09-07-2025

Johnny Depp recently sat down for hour-long conversation with The Telegraph. The actor, who was dropped by Warner Bros.' from Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore during his highly publicised trial with ex-wife Amber Heard, recalled the moment he was asked to resign. 'If you think you can hurt me more than I've already been hurt, you're gravely mistaken,' he said. Depp shared how his past shaped his present, and opened up about the abuse he suffered at the hands of his late mother, Betty Sue Palmer.
Depp, making his comeback in the acting scene, is the father of two kids, Lily‑Rose (26) and Jack (23), whom he shares with ex-wife Vanessa Paradis. Speaking to The Telegraph, the actor said he'll forever be thankful to his mother for showing him exactly how not to raise his own kids. He described his father as calm during fights, standing silently while Betty Sue Palmer would lash out at him. 'And when 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. 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.' The actor then recalled how the violence would turn toward them. 'She beat me with a f—ing stick, a f—ing shoe, an ashtray, a phone, it didn't matter, man.'
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Depp explained that while the physical pain faded, the psychological wounds stuck around, and still do. Depp's sister, Christi Dembrowski, remembered the same. When asked in court whether Depp ever hit back at his mom, Christi said, 'He never went to that place.' She remembered how their mother used to throw things, lash out, and make everything a battlefield. She said both of them made a silent pact growing up. 'Once we had our own home,' she said, 'we were never going to repeat, ever, anything similar.'
Depp, in a previous Sunday Times interview, opened up about raising his kids out of the spotlight in France and described how much he enjoyed being a father. 'I cannot tell you how much I loved being Papa.' However, after the couple called it quits in 2012 after almost 10 years together, he said, 'Then, suddenly, Papa was out the window. I was Dad.' The actor said the time spent in France with his family was the most beautiful period of his life. 'Truly, the first time I felt I had a home was the place in the south of France where Vanessa and I raised the kiddies,' he shared. 'That's the only place that ever felt like home.'
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In the later part of the interview, Depp spoke about being asked to resign from the Warner Bros. project. 'It literally stopped in a millisecond, like, while I was doing the movie. They said we'd like you to resign. But what was really in my head was they wanted me to retire,' he said, before adding, 'F*** you. There's far too many of me to kill.' Depp and his ex-wife Amber Heard were embroiled in a high-profile defamation battle, where the Aquaman star accused the actor of domestic violence and, without naming him directly, wrote an op-ed about the same. In his earlier Sunday Times interview, the actor spoke about 'all the hit pieces, the bulls**t' that came with the trial, but said he can't keep defending himself forever for something he was wrongly accused of. 'Look, none of this was going to be easy, but I didn't care. I thought, 'I'll fight until the bitter f***ing end.' And if I end up pumping gas? That's all right. I've done that before.'