Who is Johnny Depp's father? Actor reveals dad’s departure left his mother suicidal
Johnny Depp is trending worldwide thanks to his legal fight against ex-wife Amber Heard, whom he has sued for defamation after she wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post in 2018. In the op-ed, the 36-year-old actress had called herself a domestic violence survivor but did not name Depp as her abuser.
However, the actor’s legal team claimed that the piece targeted their client and sued Heard for $50 million. The blockbuster trial began in a Virginia court on April 11 and the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ star was given the chance to take the stand first. Since then, a lot of private stuff has come out in public, including details about Depp’s childhood and earlier life, which has fuelled people’s interest in his parents.
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Who is Johnny Depp's father?
Depp was born in Kentucky to Betty Sue Wells, a waitress, and John Christopher Depp, a civil engineer. For most of his early years, his family kept shifting places. He had once told Oprah Winfrey that he had shifted house “maybe 40 times”. The 58-year-old actor said, “My mom liked to move a lot. One time we moved from one house to the house next door.”
During an interview with Hello! Magazine, Depp had recalled the time when he was 12 and his parents kept "fighting”. “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. When he turned 15, his parents divorced and his father left them, which reportedly made his family’s situation worse.
In the ongoing trial, Depp revealed: “My mother was quite violent which could be in the form of an ashtray being thrown at your head or a telephone or whatever was handy. In our house, we were never exposed to any type of safety or security. She’d walk past and you’d shield yourself because you didn’t know what was going to happen.”
The father-of-two also noted that after his parents got separated, his mother went into “deep” and “dark depression” and even attempted to take her life. “I knew something was dreadfully wrong — there's drool coming out of her mouth,” he disclosed to the court and said he called 911 for aid but before that, his uncle reached with paramedics to help. He noted: “The front door busted open and my uncle and two paramedics came rushing in. She had swallowed a multitude of pills to try to take herself out. She tried to commit suicide.”
Depp also mentioned his father in his heartbreaking testimony, saying: “She was a small firecracker of a woman but after she got out of the hospital, her depression was so deep. She lived on the couch and she weighed about 70 pounds. All that imagery spun into my head at that time, I felt like that was the cowardly way for my father to have left. I was deeply upset about that.”
However, it has also been reported that Depp called his father “kind”, “shy” and “stoic”. He mentioned the time when he spoke with him after he left them. “He said, ‘I’m done. I can’t. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t live it anymore. You’re the man now.’ Those words didn’t sit well with me. I didn’t feel like I was ready to hear those words,” Depp disclosed in his testimony. But he revealed that with time, he has forgiven his father as he added: “He apologized to me for having gone through the whipping — the belt. At the same time my father was to some degree at the mercy of Betty Sue.”
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the National Suicide Hotline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).