British-American actress and comedian Ruby Wax has made a heartbreaking revelation about her challenging childhood during a candid podcast appearance, describing her late parents as "torturous" and detailing the psychological abuse she endured.
The painful confession
The 72-year-old I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! star, who recently entered the jungle alongside campmate Angry Ginge, spoke openly about her upbringing during an episode of Jamie Laing's Great Company podcast back in January. Wax didn't hold back when discussing her parents, Edward and Berta Wachs, who fled Vienna for the United States in the 1930s amid the growing Nazi threat.
"They were torturous, both of them - in my mother innocently and my dad on purpose," Wax revealed during the emotional discussion. She emphasised that her father was particularly "mean" and would engage in cruel "mind games" that affected her well into adulthood.
Psychological games and financial deception
One of the most damaging patterns Wax described involved her father deliberately misleading her about the family's wealth. "He'd take me to the bank and rattle some papers downstairs, going, 'Boy, are you rich'," she recalled. "It turned out I wasn't at all, but it kept me at home till I was, you know, my late 30s."
The comedian developed a coping mechanism where she would mentally calculate what her father "owed" her for his abusive behaviour. "Every time he'd do something vicious, I'd write down a number saying he owes me this much; he owes me this much," she explained. "If there was a beating, I charged a lot."
Verbal abuse and lasting impact
Wax described how her father would regularly insult her, calling her a "sad sack" and an "idiot" while questioning who would ever want to marry her. She noted that this criticism "never stopped," continuing even when she achieved success in her career.
Her mother, meanwhile, was "hysterical" and "never without a sponge," with Wax joking that she was "on the ceiling with Q-tips." The comedian reflected that her parents seemed to bring "the war from Europe into our kitchen," though she carefully added that she "can't blame it on the war, but he was mean."
In a 2023 appearance on Kate Garraway's Life Stories, Wax had been even more direct, stating: "They were pretty violent with each other (and me), you'd have the sh** knocked out of you."
Complex feelings about her parents
When podcast host Jamie Laing asked if she had loved her parents, Wax responded honestly: "No, I didn't," though she admitted to feeling something for them in a "primal way." She clarified that she didn't "really know who they were" and wasn't "really upset" when they passed away.
In a separate revelation from 2017, Wax discovered on Who Do You Think You Are? that her father had been imprisoned and tortured by the Nazis for his Jewish faith - something her parents had never shared with her.
Despite her difficult beginnings, Ruby Wax built an impressive career, relocating to the UK and collaborating with the Royal Shakespeare Company before landing a position with the BBC in the early 1990s. She has since become known for her advocacy work around mental health, drawing on her personal experiences to help others.
