Featured Image Credit: CBS
Topics: Johnny Depp, Film and TV, Celebrity
Anish Vij
Johnny Depp gave an awkward response when asked about his childhood back on a 1999 episode of The David Letterman Show.
The 58-year-old actor is currently suing ex-wife Amber Heard, 35, in a $50 million (£38.2 million) defamation lawsuit over abuse claims she made in an article in The Washington Post, despite not mentioning Depp by name in the op-ed.
With the lawsuit against Heard well underway, Depp has revealed that he is legally blind in one eye and claimed he suffered ‘constant physical abuse’ from his mum.
By lifting the lid on his abusive childhood, the actor hinted at his difficulties while chatting to TV host David Letterman back in the day.
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Letterman first asked: “Did you always want kids?”
Depp replied: “Oh yeah sure, yeah I love it.”
Letterman followed up: “Did you come from a big family, small family?”
The actor responded: “Uh yeah, four kids, four kids, a sort of normal-size family.”
However, the TV host then asked a question that seemed to have struck a nerve.
He asked: “Now that you're a parent, do you remember, does it immediately connect you to what your parents were trying to do when they were raising you?”
Depp bluntly replied: “No.”
“Really?”, asked Letterman.
Depp reiterated: “No, not remotely no.”
Fast-forward to 2022, Depp told the court he is ‘legally blind’ in one eye and detailed his mother Betty Sue Palmer’s abuse, revealing she referred to him as ‘cock eye, one eye, anything she could get to demean and humiliate’.
Depp, with his hair slicked back into a ponytail, said: “The verbal abuse, the psychological abuse was almost worse than the beatings."
He continued: “The beatings were just physical pain, and physical pain you learn to deal with, you learn to accept it, you learn to deal with it.
"But the psychological and emotional abuse, that's what tore us up.”
Depp also told the court that his father, John Christopher Depp, ‘never lost control or hit’ his mother.
Depp continued: “He amazingly remained very, very stoic.
"He stood there and just looked at her while she delivered the pain.
"And he swallowed it. He took it.
"There was never one moment, never a moment when my father lost control and attacked my mother or hit my mother or even said a bad thing to my mother.
“The things I witnessed were a couple of times where it got too far, I could see his eyes welling up, him staring at her saying nothing. The most that he would do is he would punch a wall.”
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