Amber ‘likes to hit ... she’ll start punching me’, Depp told friend
JOHNNY DEPP told a childhood friend that Amber Heard “likes to hit”, the High Court heard today.
Artist Isaac Baruch, who has known Depp since they were teenagers, claims the actor spoke to him in 2013 about his private life with Heard, during the early part of their relationship.
In his evidence to the libel trial, Mr Baruch said Depp had told him: “I don’t know what to do — she likes to argue and she likes to hit.”
Mr Baruch said he pressed for details and was told: “She just wants to argue about stuff all the time and then she’ll start hitting me.”
The artist said he was “kind of surprised” and asked if Depp was referring to “playful hitting” but the star continued: “She argues and then she’ll just start punching me and wants to fight, I’ll try to stop her but she just keeps going to the point where I just stop trying to stop her and say ‘OK, go ahead do your worst, get it out of your system.’”
Mr Baruch said Depp added: “I don’t know what I’m gonna do, because I’m not gonna hit her, you know me I’m not gonna hit her, I love her.”
Mr Baruch said he told his friend “hitting definitely doesn’t sound too healthy”, adding: “You don’t have to stay in this relationship if you don’t want to.”
Depp is suing The Sun’s publisher
News Group Newspapers for libel. His marriage to actress Heard ended in 2016. She claims he was violent to her in drink and drugs-fuelled rages, while Depp says she is orchestrating a “hoax” and he was the one being abused.
Mr Baruch, who lived rent-free in an LA penthouse complex owned by Depp, insisted he had never seen any injuries on Heard, adding that Depp would sometimes go to his own LA home to seek refuge. “If they got into a blow-out, that’s where he would go,” he said.
Later today, #MeToo activist Katherine Kendall who says she was targeted by disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein is due to give evidence.
She was quoted in the 2018 article by The Sun’s executive editor Dan Wootton at the centre of the case, and complained to the newspaper afterwards saying: “I never meant to be in an article that called Johnny Depp a ‘wife beater’”.
Yesterday the statements of Depp’s former partners Vanessa Paradis and Winona Ryder were publicly released.
Paradis, an actress and singer who has two children with Depp, said Heard’s claims are “false facts”, adding: “I can say he was never violent or abusive to me.”
Ryder, who was engaged to Depp in the early Nineties, said: “The idea that he is an incredibly violent person is the farthest thing from the Johnny I knew and loved.” Heard is scheduled to go into the witness box on Monday.