Whoever wins this sickening scrap, Depp and Amber BOTH lose JAN MOIR
As Heard says ex-husband gave her black eyes...
The theatres have gone dark and the cinemas are closed, while scripts gather dust in locked rooms and production has ceased on television soaps. however, those in need of a drama fix need look no further than the law courts in London, where the showbiz trial of the century — or at least the pandemic — has begun.
everything about the Johnny Depp case is wild, sensational, astonishing. It has laid bare a world in which the jets and the islands are private, but where the excess and indulgence have been made horribly public.
It confirms all our worst fears about hollywood, where darkness and despair grow like knotweed under the rivers of fresh-pressed juices and endless lemon sunshine.
In the witness box this week, Depp, once the highest-paid actors in the world, sometimes spoke of himself in the third person and delivered his lines with a Chaucerian flourish, as if he were merely playing another role.
he told the court he has the values of ‘a southern gentleman’, which meant that, ‘I would never strike a woman, under any circumstances’. at another point, he said: ‘I don’t know who Johnny Depp is.’ But who does any more?
Depp is suing the sun newspaper for £39million over allegations of domestic violence. the 57-year-old actor has taken offence at an article that called him a ‘wife-beater’. he denies attacking his former spouse, the actress amber heard — but she insists he did, on at least 14 separate occasions.
the 34-year-old beauty seems to have spent much of their marriage prowling around with a camera like a bloodspatter analyst from the hit TV show CSI: Crime scene Investigation.
Photographs she has taken purporting to be of bruises and cuts inflicted by her husband have been made public — although he claims it was she who was violent towards him, alleging that she once punched him in the face repeatedly, attacked him with a drink can, burnt him with a cigarette and even severed the tip of his finger.
DeCanters, champagne, vodka bottles and mobile phones were all, it is said, hurled during their fraught marriage, which lasted between 2015 and 2017. If both are telling the truth, their relationship echoes that of Inspector Clouseau and his manservant Cato, who were forever concocting new ways to beat each other up in the Pink Panther films.
even Depp and heard’s pet Yorkshire terriers Boo and Pistol did not escape the torment of their complex lives.
Boo allegedly ate a lump of cannabis, while Pistol was held out of the window of a speeding car by Depp. One can only be thankful they never had children together: it doesn’t bear thinking about.
the trial has been running for only four days but, already, the evidence is exhausting, petulant, sickening. It gives matrimonial dirty linen a bad name, up to and including actual soiled bedsheets.
Depp claimed he decided to divorce heard after she deliberately defecated in their bed for a prank. and they say romance is dead!
One wonders what good, if any, can come of all this. It is sad to see the breakdown of any marriage, particularly one that suggests hollywood and the fame game can still have a pernicious effect on those drawn into the vortex.
For people like Johnny and amber, lost in the onslaught of addiction or entitlement, the rules erected by society don’t apply. here we have a wife who needed her husband to grow up, and a husband who needed more support than his wife could give.
In a British summer, Johnny Depp appeared outside the court wearing sunglasses: a different pair for every day this week. Why not? he’s still big! It’s just the movies that got small.
Behind expensive aviators, whiterimmed lenses or square black frames, his gaze was hidden — but the voltage of his celebrity was undimmed. here stood Captain Jack sparrow, edward scissorhands, the Lone ranger and a bona fide Disney legend. he wore a black bandana as a face mask and pulled it down at the request of photographers.
his suit was navy, his shoes seemed to have built-up soles and heels, his request for his ex-wife to be banished from court when he gave testimony was denied. On the first day she appeared hand-in-hand with her lawyer and her sister; an all-blonde triptych of girl power, 2020-style.
next week, she will give her version of events in the witness stand. It promises to be electrifying. On present form, it will probably be horrifying, too. and deeply, deeply sad. For ultimately there can’t be any winners here.