(Washington) Johnny Depp’s career and finances were already on the decline before Amber Heard’s 2018 domestic violence charges, witnesses in the actor’s defamation lawsuit against his ex-wife said Thursday.
Posted at 3:45 p.m.
Johnny Depp “became the biggest movie star in the world” before “his star withered” from drugs and alcohol, said Tracey Jacobs, who was his agent for 30 years, before to be dismissed in October 2016.
“It got a lot more complicated” because of “his unprofessional attitude,” she said in pre-recorded testimony broadcast in court in Fairfax, near Washington.
“He was consistently late to just about every movie” he was doing, she explained.
“Teams don’t like to wait hours for the star of the film to show up and word got around […]it made people reluctant to use it,” the officer said.
According to her, his drug and alcohol use also made him more angry and handicapped him in his acting work. He thus regularly used an earpiece so that someone whispered his lines to him, noted Ms.me Jacobs. She claimed to have never witnessed violent acts by the actor.
Episode 5 of the saga Pirates of the Caribbeanfilmed in 2015 in Australia, had thus been interrupted for several weeks, because Johnny Depp had been hospitalized for having severed a finger during an argument with his wife which had degenerated into a particularly sordid sexual assault.
The actor claims to have been injured by a bottle thrown by his wife, which she strongly denied.
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Johnny Depp accuses Amber Heard of having ruined his reputation and his career by having affirmed in a column published in 2018 by the washington post that she had suffered domestic violence two years earlier, when they were married, without mentioning her name.
He assures that these allegations prompted Disney studios to deprive him of the role of the famous captain Jack Sparrow for the 6and opus of Pirates that he had to turn.
But, underlined Tracey Jacobs, “nobody was committed to him having the role”.
By 2016, “his star had faded and it was getting harder and harder to get him roles because of his reputation,” she said.
The previous year, he had received 25 million dollars to shoot Pirates 5 but only 5 million for The crime of the Orient Express released in 2017, she said.
Johnny Depp, however, continued to live at great expense, said his former wealth manager Joel Mandel, who had accompanied him since 1999 before being sacked in 2016.
According to him, Johnny Depp earned around $600 million during that time.
But beginning in 2010, Johnny Depp’s career stumbled with “several sequel movies that didn’t pan out,” he explained in his pre-recorded testimony.
In 2015, he was “extremely worried” about the actor’s financial situation. “Over time it was clear that there were alcohol and drug problems,” he said. “It was resulting in a more erratic attitude.”
Treatment for his drug addiction cost $100,000 a month and he paid his full-time staff $300,000 a month, he noted.
Deliberations are due to continue until May 27, after which the seven jurors will retire to deliberate.
The two actors had started an affair in October 2011 before getting married in February 2015. Amber Heard, 36, filed for divorce in May 2016, accusing her husband of domestic violence. She had dropped the charges before the divorce was finalized in early 2017.
Johnny Depp, who claims to have never raised his hand on a woman, already lost in 2020 a first defamation lawsuit in London, against the British tabloid The Sunwho called him a “violent husband”.