Ruby Wax has detailed her “violent” childhood at the hands of her Austrian Jewish parents, who she said “beat her up”.
The comedian, 70, reflected on her past during an appearance on Life Stories with Kate Garraway and described growing up in the US after her family fled Austria in 1938 due to the threat of the Nazi regime.
Wax said: “[My parents] took the war from Europe and brought it to the kitchen.”
She spoke of “verbal grenades” that her parents “slung” at one another, with her in the middle, adding: “Especially because I was born into the land of the free and the brave and I could have a really great life and they were nipped in the bud at 22, so they wanted to make it hard.”
“They were pretty violent with each other, and me, you’d have the s*** knocked out of you,” she continued.
The Girls on Top star said that if it weren’t for her “ambition and the drive of a Rottweiler to survive”, she could have died while living under her parents’ roof. “I have a long line of suicide on my dad’s side so yeah it would have happened. If I stayed there, I wouldn’t have made it. And I got out,” she said.
In her teenage years, she recalled being “very rebellious” and would “creep out of the window” at the age of 18 to get out of the house.
“I remember I hitchhiked at a private airport to get to San Francisco, and then of course, I’d go back [home] and they’d beat me up, and I’d go out again,” she remembered.
“I did everything to spite them and they were getting angrier and angrier.”
Wax also recalled an incident when her late father “beat her up” in front of her friends despite them trying to form an “igloo” around her to protect her.
“If I hadn’t had a whacking great sense of anger I think I would have gone under, but I was addicted to anger for a long time, I had to work really hard to get it out of my system,” she said.
“For me, it was survival because it saved me, if I wouldn’t have got out of there, I would be dead.”
Once Wax left her family home for good, she came to the UK and settled in Glasgow. She joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1978.
She later had her own comedy chat show, Don’t Miss Wax, on Channel 4 in 1987. Wax began working with the BBC in 1991 with her show The Full Wax, and in subsequent years, started her series Ruby Wax Meets… after her first meeting with Madonna in 1994.
She interviewed Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, in an episode of Ruby Wax Meets… that was nominated for a 1997 Bafta Award.
Earlier this year, Wax reflected on turning 70 in April while filming her new TV show, Ruby Wax: Cast Away.
She spoke to The Times about falling into her “first serious depression in 12 years” after her husband Ed Bye was diagnosed with prostate cancer and she stopped taking antidepressants.
The Channel 5 show saw Wax abandoned on a desert island off the coast of Madagascar, where she hoped that total isolation would improve her mental health.
“You soon learn that nature doesn’t care about you,” she said about her time on the island. “It will birth you and give you certain resources, but nature doesn’t care if you live or die.
“That is humbling. Stop worrying or giving your opinion on this or that. Who cares? In a strange way, it made me feel better.”
Anyone who requires help or support can contact the National Domestic Abuse Helpline which is open 24/7 365 days per year on 0808 2000 247 or via their website, nationaldahelpline.org.uk
