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Depp was love of my life – and awful

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I don’t know how many times he hit me in the face but I remember being on the floor of my apartment

Amber Heard

WASHINGTON: Actor Amber Heard has told a court exhusband, Pirates of the Caribbean star Johnny Depp, was obsessivel­y jealous and would punch walls and slap and hit her in drunken rages.

Heard delivered her explosive testimony after finally taking the witness stand in the defamation suit filed against her by Depp. The Aquaman star recounted the heady early days of their relationsh­ip for the jury before going into the later instances of alleged physical abuse.

“He was the love of my life,” Heard said. “But he was also this other thing. And that other thing was awful.”

The 58-year-old Depp filed suit against the 36-year-old Heard over an op-ed she wrote for The Washington Post in December 2018 in which she described herself as a “public figure representi­ng domestic abuse”.

Heard did not name Depp in the op-ed, but he sued her for implying he was a domestic abuser and is seeking $US50m in damages. Texasborn Heard has countersue­d, asking for $US100m and claiming she suffered “rampant physical violence and abuse” at Depp’s hands.

Heard said she and Depp had a “whirlwind romance” during a 2011 press tour for The Rum Diary, a film they made together. “I fell head over heels in love with this man,” she said. “When I was with him I felt that, you know, electricit­y in my body. I felt like butterflie­s. I couldn’t see straight.” Heard said things began to change in 2012. “When he first started drinking, I didn’t really think much of it,” she said. “He would disappear and then he’d come back. He’d just be different.”

She said Depp hit her for the first time after she laughed at one of his tattoos. “He slapped me for no reason,” she said, choking up on the stand.

Depp was jealous and suspicious of her friends and fellow actors, she said.

“He was accusing me of having affairs,” Heard said.

“I’m trying to defuse the situation by trying to tell him I’m not sleeping with this person and I’m not sleeping with that person. As soon as it seemed as though I had convinced him of one, there was somebody else he was sure I was sleeping with.

“Accusation­s, accusation­s and then he would explode.

“He would throw a glass, or turn over a table and then would hit the wall, and then hit the wall really close to my head.” She said Depp had slapped and hit her on a number of occasions and recounted a March 2013 argument between the pair.

“Johnny slapped me. I walked away from him and that made it worse,” she said.

“We got into a shouting match. I don’t know how many times he hit me in the face but I remember being on the floor of my apartment.”

Heard said Depp’s “drinking kind of correlated with the violence”. “Johnny on speed is very different from Johnny on opiates. Johnny on opiates is very different from Adderall and cocaine Johnny, which is very different from Quaaludes Johnny,” she said.

Heard said reliving the experience­s in the trial was the “most painful and difficult thing” she had experience­d.

 ?? Picture: AFP ?? Actor Amber Heard testifies in Fairfax County Circuit Court.
Picture: AFP Actor Amber Heard testifies in Fairfax County Circuit Court.
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