Johnny Depp opened up about his difficult childhood as he took the stand yesterday at his $50 million defamation trial.

Depp, 58, is suing his ex-wife Amber Heard, 35, over a 2018 op-ed she wrote for The Washington Post, in which she claimed to be a domestic violence survivor. He claims she defamed him in the piece.

During Tuesday's testimony from the Pirates of the Caribbean star, he spoke about the verbal, psychological, and physical abuse he says he received at the hands of his mother, Betty Sue Palmer.

The actor said on the stand: "She was very unpredictable. She had the ability to be as cruel as anyone can be with all of us. She could become quite violent and she was quite violent, and she was quite cruel.

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"And though there was physical abuse, certainly, which could be in the form of an ashtray being flung at you, hitting you in the head, or you’d get beat with a high-heel shoe or a telephone or whatever’s handy..."

Depp went on to share how he would try to avoid being targeted by his "violent" mother.

He said: "In our house, we were never exposed to any type of safety or security. The only thing that one could do, really, was to try to stay out of the line of fire.

"The verbal abuse, the psychological abuse, was almost worse than the beatings. The beatings were just physical pain. The 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 kind of tore us up."

Depp also recalled how his mother tried to take her own life and referred to his own substance abuse as never being "for the party effect."

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He said: "It’s been for trying to numb the things inside that can plague someone who's experienced trauma."

The actor said he started taking drugs at the age of 11, when he swallowed some of his mother's nerve pills "to escape feeling so much."

Depp continued: "[It’s] a pretty young age to do that, I can’t say that I’m proud of admitting to that, but I have to say that I knew not what else to do."

Defending himself, he went on to say: "The characterization of my 'substance abuse' that’s been delivered by Ms. Heard is grossly embellished and, I’m sorry to say, but a lot of it is just plainly false. I am not some maniac that needs to be high or loaded all the time."

Featured image credit: Abaca Press / Alamy

Johnny Depp opens up about 'verbal abuse' and 'beatings' his 'violent' mom inflicted on him