He hit me... I wish I’d left him then, not 4 years later
aMBeR heard fought back tears last night as she told a court her life ‘changed for ever’ the first time Johnny Depp allegedly hit her.
the actress told the jury in the pair’s $100million defamation trial that her ex-husband left her stunned after slapping her three times for simply asking about one of his tattoos.
She described being left ‘heartbroken’, saying she wished she had left the actor then instead of staying with him for another four years.
Being in court for the trial was the ‘most painful thing i have ever gone through’, she told the jury.
the testimony came after Depp, 58, spent three weeks portraying the 36-year-old actress as the abusive one in the relationship – and last night she took the stand.
the pair were married for 15 months until they split in 2016 with heard filing for divorce and a temporary restraining order.
at the court in Fairfax, Virginia, heard entered the witness box with Depp sitting ten feet away with his legal team.
the hostile atmosphere between the pair was a far cry from the picture painted by the aquaman actress of their early days together. after falling ‘head over heels in love’, she said: ‘When i was with him i felt electricity in my body. i felt butterflies, i couldn’t see straight practically.’
But then Depp would vanish for days at a time and began to drink. heard told the court he would accuse her of saying things she had not said, adding that it ‘felt really dirty to be an actor’ because Depp called other women in hollywood ‘worthless whores’.
When she wore a low-cut dress to a charity event, Depp told her: ‘Yeah, the whole world saw that, kid, that’s how they’ll remember you.’
heard said that Depp ‘loved to smash things’, but then would turn: ‘he’d throw a glass or turn over a table, then he’d hit the wall, then hit the wall really close to my head, screaming at me. But then he would disappear and get clean and sober and tell me that he was done drinking, he’d cleaned himself up and he’d go back to this wonderful, almost just unreal, unbelievably nice, sensitive kind warm generous, interesting, funny man i loved.
‘he’d make me feel so loved. i would feel so distant from that thing that was so scary. i’d not even recognise it.’
asked about the first time Depp hit her, heard said: ‘i will never forget it, it changed my life.’
She told the court how she and Depp were talking on the sofa. She thought he had been using drugs as his ‘vintage jar of cocaine’ was on the table.
heard asked Depp about a tattoo on his arm that read ‘Wino Forever’, which he had altered from ‘Winona Forever’ after he split with actress Winona Ryder.
Miss heard said: ‘he said it says “wino” and i thought he was joking and i laughed. he slapped me across the face and i laughed.
‘i laughed because i didn’t know what else to do. i thought this must be a joke. Because i didn’t know what was going on.’
She added: [he said] “you think it’s funny bitch, you think you’re a funny bitch?”
‘He loved to smash things’
and he slapped me again. it wasn’t a joke any more.’ heard fell to the floor thinking ‘God did he just me?’, she said. ‘it didn’t physically hurt me.
‘i was sat on this dirty carpet wondering how i ended up here. i didn’t want this to be the reality with the man i loved.
then the Pirates of the Caribbean actor burst into tears and told her he ‘thought he put the monster away’, she told the court. instead, the violence escalated, with Depp destroying property and ‘screaming at me’, she said.
Depp is suing her for $50million (£39.6million) for an article she wrote for the Washington Post in 2018 in which she called herself a victim of domestic violence.
the actress is countersuing for $100million claiming Depp’s team tried to ruin her career afterwards with a smear campaign. the trial will run until late May.