While Hollywood is gradually welcoming him back after the public scandal with Amber Heard, Depp has been speaking less about upcoming roles and more about the emotional scars from his past. One of the most significant influences, he says, was his late mother, Betty Sue Palmer, who passed away in 2016 but remains a deeply sensitive subject for him.
According to Depp, his childhood was marked by unpredictable domestic abuse — both physical and emotional. Despite the pain, he now claims to view it with a sense of gratitude. “She hit me with a stick, a boot, an ashtray, a phone — it didn’t matter. But now I’m thankful for it. She taught me exactly how not to raise children. You just do the opposite,” he shared.
Depp, who has two children with Vanessa Paradis — 26-year-old Lily-Rose and 23-year-old Jack — made it clear that he has always tried to protect them from the kind of upbringing he endured.
This is not the first time the actor has spoken about his difficult relationship with his mother. During his 2022 court battle with Heard, he described a household filled with constant fear. “We never felt safe. The only thing you could do was stay out of her way. She could be as cruel as it gets. The mental abuse was sometimes worse than the physical — pain becomes something you can live with, but humiliation doesn’t always fade.”
When Depp was seven, his family moved from Kentucky to Florida, spending their first months in a motel until his father found work. Looking back, he describes his childhood as a true survival course — in every sense of the word.
