Heard ‘threw haymaker punch’ after 30th party
Johnny Depp has said Amber Heard’s allegations of domestic violence “mirrored” what he claims was her abuse towards him.
The Pirates Of The Caribbean star told the High Court that “it seemed like everything she would accuse me of was something she had done to me”.
Depp, 57, also accused Ms Heard, 34, of throwing a “haymaker” punch at him during a row after her 30th birthday party, hours after he had learned during a “bad” business meeting that he had lost $650 million (£514m).
The Hollywood actor made the claims yesterday during his fifth day of evidence in his libel action against The Sun newspaper.
He is suing the tabloid’s publisher News Group Newspapers (NGN) and its executive editor Dan Wootton over an April 2018 article which labelled him a “wife beater”.
During his final morning in the witness box, Mr Depp said: “It seemed like everything she would accuse me of was something that she had done to me, so I started to see this kind of pattern, a mirroring, and when she said that, I was real taken aback, for sure.”
Mr Sherborne also asked Mr Depp about an argument after
Ms Heard’s 30th birthday party at the couple’s LA penthouse on April 21 2016.
The actor is accused of throwing a bottle of champagne at Ms Heard, grabbing her by the hair, and pushing her during a row, after he arrived home late for the party.
Mr Depp denies the allegations.
He previously told the court he went straight to bed and was reading when he arrived home as he was trying to avoid a confrontation with Ms Heard.
The court heard that in the “secret recording” of the couple’s San Francisco meeting, Mr Depp can be heard to say “you f ****** haymakered me, man”.
Mr Sherborne asked what a “haymaker” was, to which Mr Depp replied: “It’s just a type of wild swinging... kind of a roundhouse punch, as it were. It’s a bit of a wild swing, but effective if it reaches the target.”
The actor said that at a business meeting on the day of Ms Heard’s party, he was “in the early stages” of finding out from a new business manager that “the former business managers had [taken] quite a lot of my money”.
Asked how much had been taken, Mr Depp said: “I had – and this is ludicrous to have to state, it’s quite embarrassing – apparently I had made $650m and when I sacked them, for the right reasons, I had not only lost $650m , but I was $100m(£79m) in the hole because they [the previous business managers] had not paid the government my taxes for 17 years.”
Mr Depp also told the court he contracted a superbug after severing his finger in an incident in Australia.
The Hollywood actor said he “ended up getting MRSA” after having surgery to put a pin in a broken bone.