Johnny Depp Recalls Using Drugs As a Kid and Abuse From Mother: ‘That’s How I Grew Up’

Johnny Depp is reflecting on his turbulent childhood, which included heavy drug use and physical abuse.

In an interview with The Telegraph published Saturday, July 5, the Pirates of the Caribbean star, 62, recalled how, in the early 1990s, an interviewer asked him why kids would be interested in watching him play an undercover police officer going on drug busts in the TV series 21 Jump Street. He gave a candid response, saying that he had extensive experience with drugs.

“And I said, ’Well, that’s easy. ‘Cause I started taking drugs when I was about 11.’ And then I went through the whole thing. And she asked me, have you tried marijuana? I went ‘uh-huh.’ Cocaine? ‘Uh-huh.’ Heroin? ‘Uh-huh.’ I mean you name it because that’s how I grew up,” Depp admitted. “By the time I was 15, 16, I had a pretty decent chance at a doctorate in pharmacology and alcohol mixing and drinking.”

Depp played Officer Thomas “Tom” Hanson, Jr. for four seasons of the procedural drama series, which aired on Fox from 1987 to 1990. However, he told The Telegraph that “the last thing” he wanted was to be known only as a “TV actor.”

“I didn’t like the labels,” the Edward Scissorhands actor admitted. “What they were desperate to do was just make me a poster boy: ‘He’s the new James Dean.’ No, I’m not.'”

Depp also opened up about the abuse he endured as an adolescent at the hands of his mother, Betty Sue, who passed away in 2016 at age 81.

“She beat me with a f**king stick, a f**king shoe, an ashtray, a phone, it didn’t matter, man,” he told the outlet. “But I thank her for that. She taught me how not to raise kids. Just do the exact opposite of what she did.”

Depp shares two children with ex-girlfriend Vanessa Paradis: daughter Lily-Rose, 26, and son Jack, 23.

In 2022, Depp discussed his substance use during his defamation trial — which he won — against ex-wife Amber Heard, whom he was married to from 2015 to 2017. Depp explained he used drugs to “numb” himself, and it started when he would give his mom her “nerve pills.”

“When I was 11 years old, I wanted to calm down, and I didn’t know how to, so I would bring my mom her nerve pill,” he recounted. “I would walk away, and I would take one myself to escape. Caring so much, feeling so much, to escape the chaotic nature of what we were living through.”