Heard built a dossier of fake claims: Depp
Johnny Depp has rejected claims that he was a serial abuser whose drinking and drug use fuelled attacks on Amber Heard, insisting that her allegations of domestic violence were a premeditated ‘‘hoax’’ and an ‘‘insurance policy’’.
The Pirates of the Caribbean star told the High Court in London yesterday that Heard, an actress, began making a ‘‘dossier’’ of false allegations before their wedding in 2015. Depp, 57, is suing Dan Wootton, The Sun’s executive editor, and its publisher in the High Court over a 2018 article that described the actor as a ‘‘wife beater’’. He denies a series of attacks on Heard, 34.
Details of his lifestyle, where drinking and drug use were frequent, were given to the court yesterday. Photographs of the actor allegedly passed out on the floor next to his bed and lines of cocaine and other drug paraphernalia on a kitchen table were displayed.
Depp and Heard began a relationship in 2011. An email that she allegedly wrote to him but did not send in the early days of the relationship was read in court. In the message she compared him to Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, adding: ‘‘Half of you, I love. Madly. The other half scares me.’’
She added: ‘‘Many times you have hurt me. Physically and emotionally from the things you say and did while f***ed up. The monster comes out and you become mean and horrible. The opposite of why I love you.’’
Depp dismissed the allegations as a hoax, telling the court: ‘‘It appears that Heard was building a dossier very early on that appears to be an insurance policy for later. She did not like me using alcohol or drugs because she had some delusional idea that they turned me into this ‘monster’.’’
Depp joked to Paul Bettany, the British-american actor, about ‘‘burning Amber as a witch’’ and ‘‘f***ing her dead corpse’’ as she tried to wean him off drugs, the court was told. In another exchange with Bettany, 49, Depp said that he was going to ‘‘stop the booze thing’’. He described consuming a mix of alcohol as well as ‘‘powders’’ and having had ‘‘no food for days’’.
‘‘Drank all night before I picked Amber up to fly to LA this past Sunday. Ugly mate. No food for days. Powders. Half a bottle of whisky,’’ Depp wrote. ‘‘A thousand Red Bull and vodkas, pills, 2 bottles of champers on plane and what do you get? I’m done. I am admittedly too f***ed in the head to spray my rage at the one I love. For a little reason as well . . . I’m too old to be that guy . . . But pills are fine.’’
Depp and Heard got divorced in 2017. The Sun relies on 14 alleged incidents of domestic violence, all of which are denied by Depp.
The court was told that Depp allegedly slapped Heard on the face three times in March 2013 when she laughed at a tattoo that he had altered from ‘‘Winona Forever’’ to ‘‘Wino Forever’’. The tattoo on his arm was originally dedicated to the actress Winona Ryder, his former fiancee.
The case continues. – The Times