The dark side of stardom: A superstar’s childhood of pain

He explained that while the physical pain eventually became something he learned to endure, the emotional damage cut deeper. “The verbal abuse, the psychological abuse, was almost worse than the beatings… The physical pain, you learn to accept it.”

Depp has been open about the fact that the abuse came from his mother, Betty Sue Palmer. His memories of his father, by contrast, are filled with quiet endurance. “When my mother would go off on a tangent toward my father… he remained very stoic,” Depp recalled. “He stood there and just looked at her while she delivered the pain, and he swallowed it.”