AMBER HEARD AND JOHNNY DEPP
Inside their tumultuous marriage
In an ongoing libel case playing out in London’s High Court, Johnny Depp and Amber Heard have presented drastically differing accounts of their 15-month marriage. Depp, 57, is suing News Group Newspapers (NGN), the parent company of the UK tabloid The Sun, over a 2018 story that called the actor a “wifebeater”. He is also suing Heard, 34, for defamation after she wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post in December 2018 in which she described being an alleged victim of domestic violence (Depp’s lawsuit has called her allegations against him a “hoax”). Amid all of the confusing and conflicting accusations, a disturbing picture has emerged of their turbulent and toxic relationship. Below, a sampling of the most shocking claims presented by each side in court. The case continues.
AMBER’S SIDE OF THE STORY:
The first time
Heard has submitted details of 14 occasions when she claims Depp assaulted her (he denies ever hitting her). The Sun’s lawyer, Sasha Wass, QC, alleged the first time Depp physically abused his wife happened after Heard laughed at his ‘Wino Forever’ tattoo (a reinvention of his ink for one-time love Winona Ryder). In 2013, Wass said, Depp had “fallen off the wagon ... You were, in fact, acting like a wino and an alcoholic and felt very sensitive. You then slapped Ms Heard across the face, and that was the first time it happened.” Depp responded: “It didn’t happen. I didn’t hit her.”
Horror flight
On a private flight from Boston to Los Angeles, Depp is accused of acting out in a jealous rage over James Franco, Heard’s co-star in the 2015 film The Adderall Diaries. The Sun’s lawyer claimed Depp screamed at Heard calling her a “go-getter slut and a whore” in front of crew members. In a “blind rage” he allegedly kicked her in the back as she tried to walk away. “You were so angry that she wouldn’t engage with you in this discussion that you slapped her,” said Wass.
“You were acting like a wino and an alcoholic” LAWYER SASHA WASS
Depp denied the accusations, later adding he might have passed out on that flight. “As Ms Heard was berating me, screaming at me and whatnot, as is her wont, she began to get physical,” he said, adding that he “grabbed a pillow from the couch and slept on the bathroom floor.”
Dog trouble
Wass put to Depp that he had once held Heard’s Yorkshire terrier Pistol out of the window of a moving car. “You were smoking and you opened the window and you were angry and you were aggressive … and you took hold of Pistol and you held her out of the window and started making howling noises.” The actor called it “an endearing image, but it is absolute utter falsity”. He later agreed that there was a running joke about putting Pistol in the microwave as she was “ludicrously tiny.” Witch texts
The court was read a series of texts Depp had allegedly exchanged with his friend actor Paul Bettany after Heard had tried to stop him from drinking and using drugs. “Let’s burn Amber,” he wrote. Bettany replies: “I don’t think we should burn her. She’s delightful company and easy on the eye. Also, I’m not sure she’s a witch. We could do a drowning test first. Thoughts? PS: I have a pool.” Depp wrote back: “Let’s drown her before we burn her.
I will f--k her burnt corpse afterwards to make sure she’s dead.”
“No mercy”
The court heard Depp sent a text to his business manager in August 2016 in which he called Heard a “50 cent stripper” who was “begging for total global humiliation. I have no mercy, no fear and not an ounce of emotion, or what I once thought was love for this gold-digging, low level, dime a dozen, mushy, pointless dangling overused flappy fish market,” said the text, read by Wass. Birthday blowout
Depp allegedly attacked Heard when she criticised him for being late to her 30th birthday party in April 2016, throwing a magnum bottle of champagne at her and grabbing her hair. Depp said he resolved to divorce Heard after faeces was left in their bed the following day. “I thought it was a strangely, oddly fitting end to the relationship,” said Depp. During an ensuing fight about it the next month, Depp was accused of throwing his phone at Heard (“like someone throwing a baseball”, said Heard) striking her on the cheek, a charge he rejected. She sought a restraining order against Depp days later. JOHNNY’S SIDE OF THE STORY:
Hoax claims
Depp dismisses the allegations of abuse against him as a hoax. “It appears that Ms Heard was building a dossier very early on that appears to be an insurance policy for later,” he said. “She did not like me using alcohol or drugs because she had some delusional idea that they turned me into this ‘monster’.”
Depp also told the court he has the values of a “Southern gentleman”, which meant “I would never strike a woman, under any circumstances.”
“Calculated, sociopathic and emotionally dishonest”
In court documents, Depp claimed that Heard’s romantic interest in him after meeting on the set of The Rum Diaries was all a ruse to “progress her own career … She bombed me with what appeared to be love. It was not until much later that I understood that she had an agenda,” he said. Depp claimed that Heard “had well and truly researched me and my interests and she would try to pose as some expert or intellectual on these things to try to ingratiate herself with me … Rather than see this as calculated, sociopathic and emotionally dishonest, I convinced myself that it was endearing and sweet.” Depp said he’s “convinced that she came into my life to take from me anything worth taking, and then destroy what remained of it.”
Drug claims
Depp referred to his substance dependence as an “illness”, and told the court that Heard “never supported me in my attempt to be strong and avoid alcohol and drugs,” adding he had seen his ex-wife take cocaine. “There were many times in our relationship when not only did she chop the cocaine with a razor blade into lines she also put it on to her finger and rubbed it into her gums,” he said. Withholding detox medicine
Depp accused Heard of withholding his rehab medicine as he suffered from withdrawal on a pre-wedding detox trip to his private island in 2014, describing it as “one of the cruellest things that she has ever done.” He told the court how Heard would leave him “sobbing like a child” on the floor and having the “heebie-jeebies” .
Finger pointing
Depp told the court that while arguing over their post-nuptial agreement while visiting Australia’s Gold Coast in March 2015, Heard severed his finger by throwing a vodka bottle at him and accused her of repeatedly punching him in the face and stubbing out a cigarette in his cheek. Heard has alleged that during a three-day drug bender, Depp pushed her into a table tennis table, tore off her nightgown and attacked her, before smashing a telephone into a wall and severing the top of his middle finger. Heard also claims he had written messages to her around the house in a mixture of paint and blood from his finger, which Depp admits doing while “in shock”. Father figure
Depp denied “encouraging” his daughter Lily-Rose, now 21, to try marijuana as a young teenager but defended his permissive parenting style. “I knew that the marijuana I had myself, that I smoke myself, is trustworthy, is a good quality and I was bound and determined not to have her try any drugs out there in the world because it’s too dangerous,” he said. “I was raising a daughter and I was being a responsible parent as far as I was concerned.”