Johnny Depp has spent most of his life in the public eye.
The actor rose to fame with 21 jump street in 1987, before embarking on a brilliant Hollywood career in films such as Pirates of the Caribbean, Donnie Brasco and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
In recent years, however, Depp has been embroiled in controversy and is currently fighting a legal battle with his ex-wife Amber Heard over his defamation charges.
During the trial, Depp opened up about his childhood and his rocky relationship with his parents.
Depp was born in Owensburg, Kentucky on June 9, 1963, the youngest of four children. Her parents were Betty Sue Wells, a waitress, and John Christopher Depp, a civil engineer.
Early in his life, the Depp family moved often, with the actor later telling Oprah Winfrey that he moved “maybe 40 times” before he turned 15.
“My mother liked to move a lot,” he says. “Once we moved from one house to the next house.”
When Depp was around seven years old, the family moved to South Florida.
Depp described the lifestyle as “pretty normal” for him and his siblings, adding, “we didn’t know anything else”.
In 1997, he reminded Good morning! magazine that at the age of 12, his parents “always argued” and that he “had virtually no contact with the outside world”.
“As soon as I got my guitar, I locked myself in my room every day after school and did nothing but play until I fell asleep,” he said. -he declares.
In 1978, when Depp was 15, his parents divorced. Betty Sue remarried a man named Robert Palmer, whom Depp would later describe to USA today as a “really cool guy” who “spent about half his life in prison”.
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Depp left for California in 1983 to pursue a musical career, eventually turning to acting on the advice of a young Nicolas Cage.
During the ongoing legal battle with Amber Heard, Depp opened up about his childhood, alleging that he and his siblings were abused by his mother.
“[Depp’s mother] had the ability to be as cruel as anyone can be,” he said, noting that it also affected his siblings and father. “She was quite violent and she was quite cruel.”
Describing her mother’s abuse, Depp said “an ashtray” could be “thrown at you”, and claimed she hit her children on the head and sometimes used a “high-heeled shoe or a telephone or whatever was at hand”.
The actor claimed the family were shocked and his siblings instinctively shielded themselves when their mother walked past because they “didn’t know what was going to happen.”
He described his father, meanwhile, as “kind”, “shy” and “stoic”. It was also alleged in court testimony that Depp’s father used to beat him with a belt at the behest of his mother.
After Depp’s father left the family, his mother then fell into a “deep and dark depression”, according to Depp’s statement, with the actor saying she survived a suicide attempt when he was teenager.
Betty Sue Palmer died in 2016 after a long illness.
Follow live trial updates here.