ULTIMATE HELLRAISER!
Johnny Depp trashed a hotel room, dabbled in every drug going (and lists Chaucer and Rolling Stone Keith Richards as heroes). Welcome to the crazy world of Hollywood’s...
A DRUG-addled drunk womaniser he might be – but Johnny Depp was adamant yesterday he was a ‘Southern gentleman’ who would never hit a woman.
Yes, he said, he did trash a New York hotel room costing $10,000 – but it was just ‘a few dents’.
Yes, he said, he had slugged a ‘mega pint of red wine’ for breakfast in his Hollywood kitchen while smashing the glass cupboards.
And yes, he occasionally dabbled in cocaine, ecstasy, LSD, mushrooms, cannabis and prescription drugs – even supplying British actor Paul Bettany with drugs ‘if he was feeling anxious’.
But never, ever – he leaned forward in the wood-panelled witness box to insist, in a soft-spoken voice – had he used ketamine.
DRUGS FROM THE AGE OF 11
Mr Justice Nicol, presiding over Court 13, listened as the £400million Pirates of the Caribbean star took the assembled wigs through his decades of hellraising.
At one point, Sasha Wass QC, for The Sun newspaper, was listing so many assorted drugs, assaults, nights out and lost mornings that Depp, 57, resorted to just nodding in reply.
Mr Justice Nichol told him the case was being recorded, and ‘head nods don’t come out on the microphone’.
The Hollywood star, wearing a navy blue three-piece suit and glasses, mumbled ‘Sorry Sir’, then added: ‘Sorry I said “Sir” instead of “Your Lordship”.’
Depp said he had started on drugs aged 11 when he stole his mother’s ‘nerve pills’ to numb the pain of an ‘unpleasant’ childhood, and had sampled ‘every kind of drug there was’ by the age of 14.
CHAUCER AND KEEF: HIS DRUGGY HEROES
The actor said he was interested in the ‘counter culture’ of drugs.
He told Mr Justice Nichol: ‘Many literary heroes of mine [did drugs], including Chaucer who was an opium addict.’
Among his idols, he listed Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas author Hunter S Thomson, saying: ‘I believe he has a very famous quote that says I don’t condone the use of drugs or alcohol to anyone but they’ve always worked for me.’
Rolling Stone hellraiser Keith Richards – his favouirite guitarist – and musician Marilyn Manson were his other role models.
‘Have you shared recreational drugs with Marilyn Manson?’ he was asked. ‘No,’ Depp asserted.
‘Are you saying you have never taken drugs with Marilyn Manson?’ the newspaper’s QC asked.
‘Er, I’m not saying that,’ he said, prompting Miss Wass to respond: ‘Let me ask it clearly: Have you ever taken drugs with Marilyn Manson?’
Depp said simply: ‘Yes.’
He said it was ‘twice maybe, many years ago’ and not during his relationship with Amber Heard, to which Miss Wass shot back: ‘Mr Depp, you are lying about that.’
COCAINE FOR THOSE LONG DAYS ON SET
Miss Wass asked him about fellow actor Bettany – one of Depp’s ‘drug buddies’ – asking if he would supply the Avengers star with cocaine.
Depp replied: ‘If he was feeling anxious or he was feeling unpleasant, I would give him what he asked for.’
Asked if it was true Hollywood actor River Pheonix had died from a drug overdose in his club, Depp said: ‘He passed away on the sidewalk outside my club.’
At one point during their testy exchanges, Miss Wass – an acclaimed criminal barrister – asked: ‘Are you all right – have you got a runny nose?’ Depp replied: ‘No, I’m all right.’
The star, whose Hollywood hits also include Edward Scissorhands and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, said he never took drugs on shoots because he had to ‘be on the ball’.
After a pause, he added that occasionally, ‘at times, when you are on your 17th hour of the day, yes I have taken cocaine.’
THE TRASHED HOTEL ROOM
Taken back to the time when, aged 31, he demolished a New York hotel room, he said: ‘It had been a particularly bad couple of days.’
Miss Wass said he did $10,000 of damage. I made a few dents, yes,’ the actor admitted. ‘There was a vase that got turned over, I slid a couch across the room.’
She said: ‘It’s not just breaking a vase and moving a couch... You trashed the room. Why?’
Depp said a friend had ‘screwed me over’ and he was ‘expressing my anger’.
Depp trashed the New York hotel room in front of his then-girlfriend Kate Moss.
A MONSTER WITH AN ANGER PROBLEM?
Miss Wass said he had also been accused of assaulting a security guard aged 25, and hitting a photographer with a piece of wood aged 35. She called him a ‘monster’ and asked: ‘There’s a nasty angry side to your character, isn’t there?’
Depp said: ‘That wouldn’t be for me to judge’. He denied having an anger management problem, saying: ‘I also express myself by laughing – I don’t have a humour problem.’
He gave Mr Justice Nichol an example of his humour, which involved a text message about a party with ‘hookers and animals’, adding: ‘It’s just a joke.’ Depp told the court his violent run-ins had all been with ‘men – grown men, who should have known better’, pointing out that although he wasn’t proud of his behaviour in a video shown to court of him smashing up the Hollywood kitchen he shared with Miss Heard
after guzzling a ‘mega pint of red wine’, he never ‘struck’ his wife.
BROUGHT UP TO BE A SOUTHERN GENTLEMAN
But the actor did say he had advised Miss Heard to stop ‘getting her breasts out and being nude’ in films, if her ‘f***ing ambition’ to land roles that did not involve her being ‘objectified’ were not just ‘bull **** ’. He told the court some of the daring outfits she wore to premieres were ‘not helpful’. Kentucky-born Depp told the court he was from a ‘Southern family’ and rules were instilled in him from birth by his mother, adding: ‘You would be a Southern gentleman – or it would be beaten into you.’
These rules, he said, included ‘integrity, dignity, honesty, and respect for women’. Miss Wass asked him if he was behaving like a Southern gentleman in the video.
It was, he said, his ‘aspiration’ to be a gentleman.
CANNABIS, LILY-ROSE AT 13... AND BEING A RESPONSIBLE PARENT
At one point the court heard how Depp told his 13-year-old daughter he would be ‘honoured’ if she would be with him when she took cannabis for the first time.
He described how he had played a cartoon on television and ensured there was a supply of ice-cream while they shared the drug.
He said he had warned Lily-Rose, his daughter with the singer Vanessa Paradis, not to ‘experiment with drugs with people you don’t know’.
When his daughter, now a 21year-old actress and model, emailed to say ‘I love weed’, Mr Depp responded: ‘Don’t be loving it too much just yet.’ He described himself as a responsible parent.
BUT NO WIFE BEATER?
Miss Wass told Depp she was asking him all these questions because she wanted to explore if he was ‘the type of person who, when he becomes frustrated, expresses himself violently’. Depp said he understood.
He swore on oath yesterday that he never hit his wife, and it was ‘the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth’.
He recounted a time when he claimed Miss Heard had come to Depp’s hotel and tried to hug him and suggested he climb into bed to cuddle her – even though she had told a court she was in fear of him.
Depp called her ‘f***ing nuts’ as a result. His barrister said an audio recording exists of the July 2016 incident in which the incredulous actor can allegedly be heard asking: ‘After all the s*** you accused me of, now you want to touch me?’
Depp – who married Miss Heard after meeting her when she was 23 and he 46 on set of the film The Rum Diaries – told the court she had asked to see him after securing a court restraining order against him.
‘She asked for some comfort in a hug,’ he said. ‘She wanted me to embrace her. She said to the world she was in fear for her life from me and that I had been this horrible monster. I didn’t understand why she would want to touch me.’
He said she was not well and he let her use his hotel bed.
‘She looked at me and asked if I was getting in the bed to hold and cuddle her, and I said I was not. It was a very emotional time. I just sat, and I cried.’