(Washington) “He was the love of my life,” actress Amber Heard assured Wednesday, describing Johnny Depp as a man blinded by jealousy and made violent by drugs and alcohol, during the defamation trial brought by her ex-husband in a US court.
Posted at 3:37 p.m.
Updated at 6:01 p.m.
“I can’t find the words to describe how painful, horrible it is for me to sit here and go through it all again,” she said at the start of her testimony in court in Fairfax, near Washington.
The actress, dressed in a dark three-piece suit over a white-striped blue shirt and wearing light makeup, later recounted the ‘chemistry’ of meeting an ‘intimidating’ actor twice her age in 2009 , shared literary tastes and the start of a hidden affair, as Johnny Depp was in a relationship with French actress Vanessa Paradis at the time.
But insults and fits of jealousy follow one another and from 2012, violent arguments under the influence of drugs and alcohol alternate with episodes of sobriety, according to the actress.
“He was the love of my life, but he was also this other horrible thing,” she said.
“He grabbed me by the hair, by the arm, by the face, he shouted at me. He broke things near me then he hit me, it started with repeated slaps “before she pushed him away, she said, close to tears.
The actor then disappeared for a while, “then he came back (saying) that he was done with drugs and alcohol for good”.
But he quickly fell back into his addictions. “In 2012, it was the beginning and I was just beginning to distinguish his tendencies,” she pointed out, explaining that “Johnny on amphetamine (was) very different from Johnny on opiates” and that “drinking was correlated to violence”.
Recorded disputes
She also said she was sexually assaulted by her husband who accused her of stealing his cocaine in 2013.
Despite this violence, she decides to stay.
“I didn’t want to leave him, I wanted him to get better,” she said, before recounting with emotion several other incidents and fits of jealousy.
His testimony, which will continue on Thursday, was eagerly awaited on the 14and day of this ultra-publicized trial broadcast live on television and on social networks.
58-year-old Johnny Depp claims his ex-wife ruined his reputation and career after he penned an op-ed in the December 2018 washington postin which she claimed to have been the victim of domestic violence in 2016, without however citing her former husband.
He is seeking $50 million in damages, which correspond to his loss of profit after being dismissed from the studios because of the editorial.
The 36-year-old actress, who has starred in major Hollywood productions Justice League and Aquamancounter-attacked and claims 100 million dollars.
She claims to have suffered “physical violence and assault” since their first meeting and during their tumultuous marriage which lasted only two years, from 2015 to 2017.
The actor, who testified for four days at the end of April, denies having raised his hand on Amber Heard, assuring that it was she who was violent. He admitted to heavy drug and alcohol use which he claimed to be in control of most of the time.
A sign of the toxicity of their marriage, he explained in particular that they had, each on their own, got into the habit of recording their altercations, many recordings of which have been broadcast since the start of the trial. In one of them, used by the actor’s lawyers, we hear Amber Heard claim that no one would believe him if he said publicly that he was hit by his wife.
In May 2016, Amber Heard sued her husband for domestic violence before dropping these charges during divorce proceedings.
In April 2018, the British tabloid The Sun accused Johnny Depp of being “an abusive husband”. The actor sued the newspaper and lost two years later in a trial that exposed his drug and alcohol abuse.