Depp ‘disowned’ as a teen

NEWLY unearthed court documents show Johnny Depp was abandoned by his “mean” mother when he was a teen. In previously archived papers from 1981 filed by Betty Sue and John Depp — who divorced in 1978 when their son was 15 — it is claimed Johnny was “emancipated and self-supporting.”

But in interviews, the actor has painted a different picture. He began using drugs at 11, dropped out of high school at 16 to become a musician and in 1980 began playing guitar in a band called the Kids, after which he moved to Los Angeles and spent months living in a car. His first acting role was in 1984’s “A Nightmare on Elm Street” after meeting Nicolas Cage.

The court papers were uncovered by Hollywood fixer Paul Barresi in his research for a new Discovery+ series about Depp and exwife Amber Heard’s many lawsuits.

Barresi said that Depp claimed that “since age 11, he’s taken all manner of substances, including marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy, LSD, prescription painkillers, opiates and magic mushrooms. His drug use, he said, was a way to escape family problems. He struggled to find gigs in a garage band and peddled ink pens, working part time as a telemarketer. Needless to say, at age 17, Johnny was hardly financially self-sufficient, and far from being emancipated. As far as I am concerned, his mother disowned him at a time when he unquestionably needed her most.”

Depp told Rolling Stone in 2018 of his mother, who died in 2016, “My mom was born in a f - - king holler in eastern Kentucky . . . Her poor f - - king ass was on phenobarbital at 12.” He said his father, a civil engineer, was largely absent, and his mother raised him and his three siblings. But his childhood was unhappy. “Yeah, there were irrational beatings,” Depp said. “Maybe it’s an ashtray coming your way. Maybe you’re gonna get clunked with the phone . . . It was a ghost house — no one talked. I don’t think there ever was a way I thought about people, especially women, other than, ‘I can fix them.’ ”