Johnny Depp says Amber Heard taunted him over severed finger
Johnny Depp claims Amber Heard taunted him about being a male victim of domestic violence and his severed finger, drank two bottles of wine a night and punished him for breaking her ‘rules’ as he retakes High Court stand
- Johnny Depp accused Amber Heard of challenging him to ‘tell world’ that he lost finger from domestic abuse
- The Hollywood legend also claimed that the 34-year-old actress ‘drank two or three bottles of wine a night’
- 57-year-old said ex-wife would go ballistic at ‘small, mundane issues’ such as whether she took his boots off
- Actor earlier claimed he called his wife ‘Amber Turd’ after she ‘defecated’ in their marital bed in LA in 2016
- He is suing The Sun newspaper for libel after it described him as ‘wife beater’ and has called claim ‘fraudulent’
By Jack Wright For Mailonline and Katie Weston For Mailonline
Published: 14:18 EDT, 10 July 2020 | Updated: 16:14 EDT, 10 July 2020
Johnny Depp today claimed Amber Heard taunted him about being a male victim of domestic violence and his severed finger, drank two bottles of wine a night and punished him for breaking her ‘rules’ as he retakes the High Court stand.
The Hollywood legend was re-examined by his barrister at the High Court in London after days of damaging allegations by his ex-wife Heard that he attacked her on 14 separate occasions in his libel action against The Sun.
He accused the 34-year-old actress of challenging him to ‘tell the world’ that he lost his finger in a domestic abuse incident and telling him it was a ‘fair fight.’
David Sherborne, for Depp, read out alleged texts sent by his former spouse after an explosive row in Australia while he filmed Pirates of the Caribbean 3.
The nightmare fight involved Depp, 57, painting ‘I love U’ in blood from his severed finger across the walls of his rented mansion.
He maintains that the injury was inflicted by Ms Heard throwing a bottle at him while she claims that it was sustained when he smashed his own phone against a wall.
Reading from messages allegedly sent by Depp to his ex-wife, Mr Sherborne said: ‘Amber I lost a f***ing finger man.. Come on man I had a can of spirits thrown at my nose.’
‘And then do you see Ms Heard replies. She doesn’t deny it,’ the lawyer added.
‘It was a fair fight… See what the jury and the judge think. Tell the world Johnny… I, Johnny Depp, a man, I too am a victim of domestic violence,’ she allegedly replied.
Depp is suing The Sun for libel after it labelled him a ‘wife beater’. He has called the accusation ‘utter falsity’ and ‘fraudulent’ and has claimed Heard abused him throughout their marriage.
The hearing continues on Monday before Mr Justice Nicol with evidence from witnesses including Depp’s screenwriter Stephen Deuters.
Other developments in court today included:
- Depp was accused of throwing a phone at Amber Heard and calling her ‘Amber Turd’ after she allegedly defecated in their bed after a blazing row on her 30th birthday party;
- He showed up two hours late to the birthday party after receiving some ‘bad financial news’ and retired to bed after her guests had gone instead of celebrating with her;
- She accuses him of throwing a magnum of champagne at her and pulling her hair in the ensuing row;
- The next day, Depp discovered someone – he believed Heard – had defecated in their marital bed;
- Defecation made him settle on divorce before Heard accused him of throwing a phone at her in a later row;
- Trans activist iO Tillet Wright and fighter Raquel Pennington were present during alleged phone throwing;
- All three claim Depp assaulted Heard in May 2016 incident; he has accused them of ‘choreographed hoax’;
- Depp threatened to ‘slice off’ Elon Musk’s ‘d***’ in rant to Lady Gaga’s ex-fiance, High Court heard;
- 57-year-old actor accused Heard of having affair with SpaceX founder, which billionaire Musk denies.
Johnny Depp leaves the High Court in London today after his fourth day on the stand in his blockbuster libel trial
Amber Heard leaving the High Court in London for a hearing in Depp’s libel case against the publishers of The Sun
The 34-year-old actress and her ‘Team Heard’ arriving at the High Court (far right, her lawyer Jennifer Robinson)
Depp has accused Heard (right) and her friends including trans activist iO Tillet Wright (left) of ‘defecating’ in their marital bed after he turned up two hours late ‘drunk and high on drugs’ to Heard’s 30th birthday party in April 2016. He then ‘resolved’ to divorce Heard. Depp has been accused of then smashing a phone into Heard’s face as he went to pick up his personal belongings at her LA home in May 2016. The Sun’s QC said MMA fighter Raquel Pennington (centre), a friend of Heard’s who lived nearby, came into the apartment during the alleged incident after receiving a text from Wright, who was also present. All three claim Depp assaulted Heard. He has accused all three of participating in a ‘choreographed hoax’
Depp ‘threatened to cut off Elon Musk’s penis’
Johnny Depp threatened to ‘slice off’ Elon Musk’s ‘d***’ in explosive texts sent after turning ‘bitter’ towards his ex-wife, the High Court heard today.
The actor has accused Heard of having an ‘extra-marital affair’ with the SpaceX billionaire – which Musk vehemently denies.
In a recorded exchange between Depp and Lady Gaga’s ex-fiancee Christian Carino played to the court today, the actor said: ‘I’ll show him things he’s never seen before like the other side of his d*** when I slice it off.’
He also said: ‘She’s begging for global humiliation. She’s gonna get it. I’m gonna need your texts about San Francisco brother…I’m sorry to even ask…. But she sucked Mollusk’s [ a reference to Elon Musk] crooked d*** and he gave her some sh***y lawyers.’
The Hollywood legend said in another message: ‘I want her off that WB film’ – a reference to Heard’s role in Aquaman from which there was later a petition garnering 400,000 signatures to have her removed.
Asked about the texts and the petition by The Sun’s QC Sasha Wass in the final round of cross-examination today, Depp said: ‘Mr Carino was someone who was very interested in being an agent of mine at the time.
‘That petition I believe was made years later. I did not orchestrate [it.]’
‘She drank two bottles of wine a night and it was almost as if there were rules’
Depp said his ex-wife would go ballistic at ‘small, mundane issues’ such as whether she took his boots off or whether he put his arm around her while watching TV on the sofa.
He told the High Court today: ‘It was almost as if there were rules, she has a routine and if that routine isn’t met to her standards then there was going to be a problem.’
Depp’s barrister David Sherborne asked what would happen if he broke his ex-wife’s ‘rules’, to which Depp replied: ‘An argument would ensue and all hell would break loose.’
The actor also claimed that Heard repeatedly secretly filmed him and claimed that his notorious video rant shown to court on Tuesday in which he said ‘I’ll give you f***ing crazy’ had ‘nothing to do with’ Heard.
Fielding questions from Sherborne, he told the High Court: ‘The monster story was something that Ms Heard… she rather liked the idea that I was the monster.
‘If you have had an argument and you are trying to explain your position in an argument and things do escalate, that for her would become the monster.
‘Any time I didn’t comply or agree with what was her position, then she would call it the monster and then the monster grew from there into this whole whatever she wanted it to be, and she used it quite a lot.’
‘For me, MDMA is a waste of time because it doesn’t really affect me so much’
Mr Depp was asked by Mr Sherborne about drugs and said: ‘For me, MDMA is a waste of time because it doesn’t really affect me so much.’
He also said magic mushrooms have ‘largely no effect’ for him, and added: ‘Marijuana I find a far better replacement than prescribed medication to calm oneself, to be calm.’
Mr Sherborne asked: ‘Does it ever turn you into a paranoid tailspin?’
Mr Depp replied: ‘No, not remotely.’
The barrister asked: ‘Does cocaine have the effect of making you crazed and hyped up?’
Mr Depp replied: ‘No sir.’
He said he had used cocaine as it is a ‘replacement for serotonin and dopamine’ after he had ‘kicked the Roxies’, adding: ‘For me, they are far more addictive than cocaine.’
‘I don’t recall exactly why a prenup wasn’t signed… she just didn’t sign it or didn’t get around to it‘
Mr Depp confirmed to Mr Sherborne that he had wanted Ms Heard to sign a pre-nuptial agreement before their marriage.
The barrister said: ‘It is put against you that you were controlling and overbearing of Ms Heard. Did you want her to sign one but she chose not to, or is there some other explanation for why it wasn’t signed?’
Mr Depp said: ‘I don’t recall exactly why it wasn’t signed… she just didn’t sign it or didn’t get around to it or whatever excuses there were.’
Mr Sherborne asked: ‘Did you refuse to marry her because it wasn’t signed?’
The actor replied: ‘No sir.’
Mr Depp said no post-nuptial agreement was signed either, that there had been an argument because of it, and he had reprimanded a lawyer who Ms Heard said had made her cry.
He told the court: ‘She felt I didn’t love her and I didn’t trust her enough, and she wasn’t in the will and we didn’t have credit cards together.’
‘It’s difficult to walk to the bathroom without every bone in the body to the marrow’
Mr Depp was also asked about an audio clip of a male voice shouting ‘argh’ repeatedly, as if in pain, said to be of him groaning on the plane.
He said he had not heard it before, but that he realised after hearing it in court on Wednesday that the recording of him ‘making these sort of animal-like sounds’ was ‘from when I was detoxing from Roxies (Roxicodone) in the 2014 on the island in the Bahamas’, not from the flight from Boston to LA, as Ms Heard alleges.
Mr Depp said: ‘Initially, the plan was not to bring Ms Heard because of the potential problems that we could have, that would be doing a great deal of damage to the process of unleashing the drug from my body … but Ms Heard was quite insistent on being there to take care of me, as it were, so she came along.’
Mr Sherborne said Mr Depp was having ‘uncontrollable spasms’ and asked if he could have attacked Ms Heard ‘given the condition you were in’.
He replied: ‘When you you are in that situation, when you are detoxing from a drug as strong as those opiates, you are incapable.
‘It’s difficult to walk to the bathroom without every bone in the body to the marrow… it’s very painful and unpredictable. I was not in any condition to fight.’
THE 14 TIMES JOHNNY DEPP IS ACCUSED OF ATTACKING AMBER HEARD
1. Early 2013
Heard says Depp was completely sober until early 2013, and around that time he allegedly hit her for the first time when they were in Los Angeles.
She claims Depp later cried and apologised, telling her that he sometimes turns into ‘the monster’ when he snaps.
Depp has ‘expressly denied’ hitting Heard and said that, around early 2013, he had ‘confined himself to drinking wine and using marijuana, having been sober from around December 2011 to August 2012’.
2. March 8, 2013
Heard claims Depp was angry she had hung up a painting by her ex-partner Tasya Van Ree by her bed in her LA home, then tried to set the painting on fire and hit her ‘so hard that blood from her lip ended up on the wall’.
Depp, however, says he simply asked Heard to move the painting from the bedroom ‘as a courtesy’ and that she had an ‘extreme reaction’.
He also says a text he later sent describing the evening as a ‘disco bloodbath’ was to ‘placate Ms Heard’ and not an apology for alleged violence.
3. June 2013
Heard and Depp were in Hicksville, US with a group of people including Heard’s sister Whitney and Depp’s assistant Nathan Holmes.
Heard says Depp, who was ‘taking drugs’, became ‘enraged’ and ‘jealous’ when one of her friends touched her, and he then threw glasses at her, ripped her dress and damaged the cabin they were staying in.
Depp says he drank and took magic mushrooms, as did Heard and her friends who also took MDMA.
He claims Heard’s friend touched Heard in an ‘extremely sexual manner’ and he spoke to her to ask her to stop.
4. May 24, 2014
The pair took a private plan from Boston to LA: Heard says that during the flight Depp, who had been drinking heavily, threw objects at her, pushed a chair at her, slapped her and kicked her in the back before passing out in the toilet.
Depp says Heard ‘began to harangue him’ as he was sketching in a notebook, he then tried to ‘playfully tap her on the bottom with his foot’, at which Heard took ‘great offence’ and ‘continued to verbally berate’ him.
5. August 17, 2014
The couple went to the Bahamas, Depp says to ‘cure his dependence on painkillers’, although Heard claims he was trying to give up other drugs too.
Heard says Depp had ‘several manic episodes’ and his private doctor had to be flown over to help. She alleges that he slapped, kicked and grabbed by the hair during an attack.
Depp alleges Heard stopped a nurse from giving him treatment while he was going through withdrawal.
6. December 17, 2014
Heard says Depp was ‘violent towards’ her in LA, and later texted calling himself a ‘f****** savage’ and a ‘lunatic’. Depp denies any allegation of violence and says NGN has ‘failed to provide any particulars of the alleged violence’.
7. January 25, 2015
While the couple were in Tokyo, Japan, Heard claims Depp shoved and slapped her and grabbed her by the hair, before standing over her and shouting while she was on the floor – which Mr Depp denies.
8. Around March 3-5, 2015
Depp is said to have repeatedly assaulted Heard after an argument over his alleged use of MDMA during a three-day trip to Australia. She says he stayed up all night, taking pills and drinking, and then attacked her again the next morning.
Heard says, the following night, Depp pushed her into a table tennis table, tore off her nightgown and attacked her, before smashing a telephone into a wall and severing the top of his middle finger.
She also claims he had written messages to her around the house in a mixture of paint and blood from his finger, which Depp admits doing while ‘in shock’, as well as having ‘urinated all over the house in an attempt to write messages’, which he denies.
Depp says Heard was in ‘a prolonged and extreme rage’ following an argument over a post-nuptial agreement. He says he then ‘broke my sobriety’ with several glass of vodka, before Heard threw a bottle at him, severing the top of his finger, and stubbed a cigarette out on his cheek.
9. March 2015
Heard says Depp became ‘enraged’ when they were in LA with her sister and began destroying things in the house before hitting her ‘hard and repeatedly’. She also claims he tried to push her sister down the stairs before hitting Heard again.
Depp, however, says Heard was ‘berating him in a rage’ as he tried to leave, threw a can of Red Bull at him and punched him in the face before he finally left.
10. August 2015
While they were on the Eastern and Oriental Express in south east Asia, Heard alleges Depp ‘picked a fight’ with her, hit her and pushed her against a wall by the throat, ‘causing her to fear for her life’ – which is denied by Depp.
11. November 26, 2015
In LA, Depp is alleged to have ripped Heard’s shirt and ‘threw her around the room’, also throwing a wine glass and a ‘heavy glass decanter’ at her, as well as pushing her over a chair which caused her to bang her head against a wall. Depp says they were in LA for Thanksgiving, but denies any allegation of abuse.
12. December 15, 2015
Heard claims Depp threw a decanter at her in their penthouse in LA, then slapped her and dragged her through the apartment by her hair, allegedly pulling ‘large chunks of hair’ from Heard’s scalp.
She says he then followed her upstairs and pushed her to the floor while shouting ‘you think you’re a f****** tough guy’ before headbutting her.
Heard says that when she told Depp she wanted to leave him he grabbed her and screamed: ‘I f****** will kill you – I’ll f****** kill you, you hear me?’
Depp, though, says ‘Ms Heard fabricated the alleged violence’, falsely claiming that ‘blonde hair on the floor was her hair’.
He also claims that ‘the only violence committed on that date was by Ms Heard’, who allegedly ‘violently attacked’ him.
13. April 21, 2016
Heard says Depp arrived at her birthday party at their LA home late, ‘drunk and high on drugs’ and they had an argument after the guests had left.
She claims he threw a bottle of champagne at her and shoved her to the floor several times before leaving a note reading: ‘Happy F****** Birthday.’
Depp says he arrived at the party around two hours late following a meeting with his new business manager and accountants, and that he was not on drugs but ‘shocked from what he had learnt at the meeting about his business affairs’.
He claims Heard had been ‘drinking heavily’ and attacked him while he was reading in bed, punching him in the face four times before he grabbed her arms to stop her.
Depp says the next day Heard or one of her friends ‘defecated in Mr Depp’s and Ms Heard’s bed’, and that Heard later told the building manager Kevin Murphy that it was ‘just a harmless prank’ – at which he point he ‘then resolved to divorce Ms Heard’.
14. May 21, 2016
Depp arrived at their LA apartment, allegedly ‘drunk and high’ while Heard was there with friends.
Heard said Depp became ‘very angry’, throwing her phone at her and hitting her in the eye before smashing ‘everything he could’ with a magnum of champagne.
He says he went to the apartment with two security guards to collect his belongings after Heard and her sister ‘repeatedly’ tried to contact him.
Depp claims his two security guards entered the room when they heard Heard shouting, and saw her ‘repeatedly screaming, ‘stop hitting me, Johnny” while he was 20 feet away in the kitchen.
He also says that two police officers who attended the apartment after the incident ‘saw no injuries or bruising or swelling’.
‘I have slept on many bathroom floors as a result of trying to avoid any violent confrontations’
Mr Sherborne asked Mr Depp about the flight from Boston to LA in May 2014, when the actor is alleged to have attacked Ms Heard before passing out in the plane’s toilet.
The barrister said the couple had had ‘a number of arguments on plane trips’ and ‘this one is said to have been about James Franco’.
Mr Sherborne asked about Ms Heard’s description of Mr Franco, which is said to have been that he was ‘rapey’.
Mr Depp said Mr Franco had been described as ‘creepy, rapey, sexually aggressive … those were the words she use to describe him to me’.
He added that he had been ‘sitting down drawing in my journal’ when Ms Heard began shouting at him and he went to the toilet to get away from her.
Mr Sherborne asked if this was ‘a one-off’.
Mr Depp replied: ‘No, I’m loath to say but I have slept on many bathroom floors as a result of trying to avoid any violent confrontations.’
JOHNNY TAKES THE STAND
Mr Sherborne asked Depp about the ‘monster’ and his responses to Ms Wass during cross-examination that it was a term he used to ‘placate’ Ms Heard, with which the actor agreed.
Depp told the court: ‘This is an odd example, but I think it is representative on the whole.
‘Ms Heard was in the habit of, when I returned home from work and sat down on the couch, that she would come over to me and take my boots off, unlace my boots and take them off me, which was a beautiful, lovely gesture.
‘I always thought it was a very kind, loving gesture.
‘At one point I came home and sat on the couch and she was doing something, I can’t remember … so I took my boots off, and she approached me and said, ‘What did you do, why did you take your boots off? That is my job’.
‘I said, ‘Well you were busy, I just took them off’, and that made her very upset and that became an argument, it escalated to an argument.’
The actor added that taking off boots is ‘such a small, mundane issue’ and that was ‘where it would go’.
Depp told the court: ‘Normally, when we were at home we would have dinner in front of the television and lay on the couch together or sit on the couch together, and that was normal for us, that is what we would do.
‘But on occasion, out of nowhere, if my hand wasn’t holding Ms Heard’s hand or I didn’t have my arm around her or whatever, she would reach over and grab my hand and put it on her thigh, so that I was then feeding the attention that she wanted.
‘It was almost as if there were rules, she has a routine and if that routine isn’t met to her standards then there was going to be a problem.’
Mr Sherborne asked what would happen if Depp broke his ex-wife’s ‘rules’, to which he replied: ‘An argument would ensue and all hell would break loose.’
‘She had difficulty dealing with feelings of insecurity and jealousy’
Mr Sherborne asked Depp if, other than Heard, ‘has any woman ever accused you of hitting them in your 57 years?’ Depp replied: ‘No, sir.’
The barrister then read out medical notes on Ms Heard, which referred to her ‘history of substance abuse, including addiction to cocaine and liquor’.
The notes also referred to Heard having had ‘severe outbursts of anger and rage’ and having ‘reported (an) increase in verbal disagreements resulting in… anxiety’.
It continued that Heard ‘expressed she had difficulty dealing with feelings of insecurity and jealousy when not in the presence of her husband’.
Mr Sherborne asked: ‘Does this accord with how you experienced Ms Heard or not?’
Depp replied: ‘Yes.’
The barrister asked Depp about questions put to him by The Sun’s barrister Sasha Wass QC on Wednesday.
Mr Sherborne asked about Depp’s contention that Heard ‘was not always entirely supportive in terms of the challenges you faced with alcohol and drugs’.
Depp said: ‘Ms Heard kept whiskey, a bottle of whiskey, Bulleit bourbon, in the freezer for me.
‘A shot would be poured when I arrived, even if Ms Heard was asleep. When I arrived there would be a shot of whiskey on the nightstand.’
Mr Sherborne also asked about Depp’s evidence that Ms Heard would drink ‘two or three bottles’ of wine a night.
The actor said: ‘It was normally two bottles a night.’
Mr Sherborne then referred to ‘examples of Ms Heard’s use of drugs’, including an email she sent to friends before they went to the Hicksville trailer park in June 2013.
The email asked all those attending ‘to bring some food, booze and drug of choice – yay’.
Mr Sherborne asked: ‘Does that accord with your understanding of what Ms Heard and her friends liked to do when they wanted to party?’
Depp replied: ‘Yes, sir.’
‘She definitely poured me whiskey… the lines of cocaine’
Mr Sherborne said it was suggested to Depp during his cross-examination by Sasha Wass, NGN’s counsel, that it was ‘nonsense’ that Heard poured him whiskey and chopped lines of cocaine for him.
Depp said: ‘She definitely poured me whiskey… the lines of cocaine… early in our relationship it was… very much like the boots thing.
‘She would chop cocaine for me but she wouldn’t ingest it through her nose … she would rub it on her gum.’
Mr Sherborne referred to a schedule for Depp and Heard’s wedding which detailed a 7pm rehearsal dinner and then said: ‘After, dance party, drugs and music.’
The barrister said: ‘So this is Ms Heard wanting to arrange drugs for her friends as part of the weekend wedding celebrations?’
Depp replied: ‘I certainly didn’t see this at the time … but that seems to be the plan.’
Mr Sherborne said: ‘And were there drugs at the wedding and rehearsal dinner?’
Depp replied: ‘Yes.’
‘Amber would have seen my Wino Forever tattoo countless times’
Mr Sherborne turned to the allegations of domestic violence, referring to ‘the first alleged incident when you are supposed to have been physically violent towards Ms Heard’ in early 2013.
Ms Heard alleges that Depp slapped her three times after she joked about a tattoo he had done on his arm during his relationship with actress Winona Ryder, which originally read ‘Winona Forever’, but was altered to ‘Wino Forever’ after they split.
Mr Sherborne asked when Depp had the tattoo altered, ‘was it the beginning of 2013?’
Depp replied: ‘No sir, the tattoo was altered in about 1993.’
Mr Sherborne said: ‘So, throughout your relationship, in the 18 months or so before 2013 … the tattoo had always read ‘Wino Forever’?’
The actor replied: ‘Yes, that’s correct.’
He was asked if that was ‘the first time Ms Heard had seen your tattoo’, and said it was not.
Mr Sherborne continued: ‘Can you explain how many times Ms Heard would have seen your tattoo?’
Depp said: ‘By that time, it would be countless, endless times. My tattoos, they are not going anywhere, they’re not moving.’
‘Her sister applauded me for defacing her ex’s painting’
Depp was asked about the second alleged incident of domestic violence, in March 2013, when he is said to have tried to set fire to a painting by Ms Heard’s ex-partner Tasya van Ree and hit her ‘so hard that blood from her lip ended up on the wall’, which he denies.
Mr Sherborne asked: ‘Did you, at any stage, set fire to this painting?’
Depp said: ‘No, sir.’
He added that the suggestion that he tried to set fire to a painting with a wooden frame and glass with a cigarette lighter was ‘rather ridiculous’.
Mr Sherborne said it was alleged that Depp ‘upset Ms Heard enormously when you disparaged’ Ms van Ree, which ’caused a massive argument’.
But Mr Sherborne suggested that Heard ‘had had some bad things to say herself, particularly just after she had split from Ms van Ree’.
Depp said: ‘Yes, she had. When they broke up, she told me that Ms van Ree became quite upset, quite angry, and had to change the locks and kept all of her furniture, all of her things.’
Mr Sherborne read out text messages between Depp and Heard’s sister, Whitney Henriquez, around the time of the second alleged incident.
Depp sent a photo to Henriquez of him having written ‘Tasya van Pee’ over ‘Tasya van Ree’ on the glass frame of one of her paintings.
The actor said Henriquez ‘wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about Ms van Ree and they had problems over the years and she hated her’.
LAPD officer tells court redness she found ‘no injuries’ on Heard and said red cheeks were caused by ‘crying’
An LAPD officer said she attributed redness on Amber Heard’s cheek to ‘crying’ and found no injuries when she was called to an alleged domestic abuse incident at the couple’s penthouse.
Officer Melissa Saenz said she responded to reports of violence with her partner officer Tyler Hadden at the colossal apartment in downtown LA on May 21, 2016.
The policewoman said she inspected Heard in the hallway of the apartment after being led upstairs by a ‘generic white male’ whose name she did not record.
She said she found no injuries and attributed the change in skin tone to Heard’s crying.
Giving evidence via video-link today officer Saenz said that the relationship between victim and perpetrator was often ‘complex’ in domestic violence cases.
The court heard Henriquez replied to Depp’s text by saying: ‘Well done, my friend, well done. The van Pee painting earns you 20 points in my book.’
Depp then texted her: ‘Can’t stand that f****** hovering vulture.’
Henriquez replied: ‘She’s the worst. Did sis (Ms Heard) notice the van Pee yet?’
Depp texted back: ‘Oh yes, she laughed her arse off.’
Mr Sherborne told the court the painting incident was ‘originally’ said to have been the night before Depp was ‘meant to be on the set of the Keith Richards documentary’ the actor was making.
But he said the ‘Keith Richards day argument… took place on March 22 (2013), not March 8 as she originally says’.
‘She had an affair with an old friend’
The barrister asked what sparked the argument between Depp and Heard, which she says was prompted by Ms van Ree’s painting.
Depp said he had been told by a woman at a dinner party that Ms Heard ‘had had an affair with’ a friend of hers who lived in Spain.
He said Ms Heard had told him the man ‘was just a friend and nothing had ever happened between them’ before she went to visit him for around two weeks.
The actor continued: ‘So I, for all intents and purposes, had found Ms Heard to be lying about the situation and her relationship with this man.
‘Because I brought the truth up to Ms Heard at the time, Ms Heard was very upset … I thought that we should sit and discuss it and get to the bottom of it so that I could know the truth.’
‘You want to see crazy?’ video
The 57-year-old went on to say that a video showing him allegedly flying into a drunken rage at Amber Heard was ‘nothing to do with her at all’ and was filmed three years before she says it took place.
The 90-second video, shown on the first day of Depp’s blockbuster libel case against The Sun, appeared to show the pair arguing in the kitchen they shared together while an agitated looking Depp repeatedly slammed cupboard doors and kicked at a cabinet while shouting ‘motherf*****’.
Depp is seen to grab a bottle of red wine which he pours into a large glass, described by The Sun’s QC Sasha Wass as a ‘mega-pint’, while in a heated discussion with 34-year-old Heard.
He then appears to throw a wine bottle to the floor moments after telling Ms Heard ‘I’ll give you f***ing crazy’. The footage ends when the actor appears to notice he is being filmed and grabs the device from the kitchen counter.
Taking the stand at the High Court in London today, though, Depp insisted that he was not in an argument with his ex-wife and that the video was filmed without his knowledge while he was filming The Lone Ranger in 2013.
Being cross-examined by his lawyer David Sherborne, he said: ‘I had a bad night and it was proving to be a very bad morning already. I don’t remember exactly but… I don’t believe it had anything to do with Ms Heard at all.’
Mr Sherborne asked: ‘Did you know you were being filmed?’
The actor replied: ‘No, I didn’t. That’s clear from my reaction.’ He added: ‘She kept trying to… hide when I got close and then she would change the angle, and then I finally saw she was filming me and, yes, that made me very upset because I couldn’t understand why she would be filming me.’
The barrister said, and Depp agreed, that was not the only time Heard had recorded him during their relationship.
Depp said she used her phone ‘constantly … all the time’, and took ‘lots of photos of herself’.
The video, shown on the first day of Depp’s libel case, shows Depp and Heard appearing to argue in the kitchen
Mr Sherborne asked Depp about Ms Wass’s suggestion that ‘you surround yourself with a group of people who all say yes to you about everything and never say no or stop you’.
He asked: ‘If you were being violent to a woman, would you expect your security team or your assistants to turn a blind eye or let you get away with it?’ Depp replied: ‘Never.’
Mr Sherborne referred to incidents in the 1980s and 1990s which The Sun’s QC asked the actor about on Tuesday.
He asked Depp about ‘a press report where it was suggested that you were arrested on suspicion of assaulting a male security guard in 1989’, and if he was charged over the incident.
Depp said: ‘In 1989, the security guard took me to court. I hired a QC – this was in Vancouver, Canada – and I hired a QC, we went to trial two or three months later and, when the security guard arrived with his representatives, he had a neck brace on.
‘This was three months after the incident and, essentially, it was thrown out.’
Depp with Kate Moss: ‘Some guys play golf, some guys smash hotel rooms’
Commenting on accusations of a ‘spat’ with former girlfriend Kate Moss in a trashed New York hotel room in 1994 that landed him with a £10,000 payout fee, Depp said it never happened.
‘Ms Moss wasn’t involved in any of it, there was no spat,’ the 57-year-old said.
‘How long did you go out with Kate Moss for?’ Mr Sherborne asked.
‘Three and a half years,’ came the reply.
‘Did you ever during those three and a half years hit Ms Moss? the lawyer said.
‘No sir, no,’ Depp said.
Mr Sherborne referred the actor to ‘another article about this hotel room incident’ which said Depp only did around 2,000 dollars’ worth of damage, but paid more ‘to make up for leaving the hotel before his reservation was up’.
He asked: ‘Did you try to avoid paying damages for what you did? Did you refuse to accept responsibility for the damage?’
Depp said: ‘No, sir. I actually told the security guard when he came to my room that I was more than willing to pay for everything I had broken.’
Mr Sherborne asked: ‘Where was Ms Moss?’
The actor replied: ‘She was in the bedroom sleeping.’
Sherborne then played to the court a clip of an ABC interview with Depp which referred to the New York hotel incident, in which the actor said ‘some guys play golf, some guys smash hotel rooms’.
Ms Wass had asked Depp why he had not mentioned his explanation for why he ‘trashed’ the hotel room, that he was angry because a friend had ‘screwed him over’, in that interview and suggested the incident happened during an argument with Kate Moss.
Commenting on accusations of a ‘spat’ with former girlfriend Kate Moss in a trashed New York hotel room in 1994 that landed him with a £10,000 payout fee, Depp said it never happened
Depp said he was defending his heavily pregnant ex-wife Vanessa Paradis from ‘ravenous’ and ‘snotty’ paparazzi when he chased photographers with a plank in 1999 (pictured, Depp receiving his Hollywood star in LA in 1999)
Depp with Vanessa Paradis: ‘Paparazzi I chased off with a plank of wood were snotty, quite aggressive and ravenous’
Depp said he was defending his heavily pregnant ex-wife Vanessa Paradis from ‘ravenous’ and ‘snotty’ paparazzi when he chased photographers with a plank in 1999.
Asked by Mr Sherborne about the incident in which he charged towards photographers at a restaurant in London, Depp said he refused to allow his wife’s pregnancy turned into a ‘circus.’
He said: ‘What they wanted was the novelty photograph of my heavily pregnant fiancee and myself and I was not comfortable with it being turned into a circus.
‘It was through the restaurant’s kitchen and out the other side. They were outside on the sidewalk and I was inside.
‘It was some of the usual aggressive paparazzi, the attempt to poke and prod and get you to do something out of character or, well they want an interesting photograph and what’s more interesting than someone screaming or freaking out? So yeah.
‘The obscenities (they shouted), I can’t remember but they were quite aggressive and pretty snotty.
‘They were ravenous and they were also quite upset that I had ruined their opportunity because I distracted them at the loading door as Ms Paradis and our friends that had come to dinner with us they were safely in the car and they were upset that they didn’t get that photograph.’
He said there were ‘about 15’ photographers there who were shouting ‘obscenities’ at him.
Depp was then asked about an ongoing lawsuit against him in America for allegedly punching a crew member, Gregg ‘Rocky’ Brooks, on the set of his film, City Of Lies – which Mr Depp denies.
Mr Sherborne showed Depp a photo of him and Mr Brooks, which the Hollywood star said was taken on the evening of the alleged incident.
Depp said: ‘At the end of the night, when I was wrapped from work, I had asked my assistants to grab a bottle of wine and to find out if Mr Brooks was still at the location.
‘He was, I went to find Mr Brooks. I had two cups, plastic cups, and I wanted to apologise to him for having reprimanded him for his actions.
‘I didn’t want there to be any bad blood or continuing animosity so I went to speak with him and make sure that we were OK, and then we toasted one another with the wine and then he asked if I could have a selfie with him.’
Depp’s co-star Ellen Barkin ‘clearly held a grudge when I didn’t want a relationship with her’, court hears
Mr Sherborne then asked Depp about statements made by actress Ellen Barkin, who appeared with the actor in the film Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, based on a novel by Hunter S Thompson.
He asked: ‘Was there any so-called violence in your relationship with Ms Barkin?’
Depp said: ‘No, not at all.’
The actor said on Tuesday that Barkin was ‘clearly holding a grudge’.
Mr Sherborne asked what might have caused her to hold a grudge.
Depp said the pair ‘had been friends for a number of years’ and that, after she divorced her husband, actor Gabriel Byrne, ‘a sexual element began’ in their relationship.
He added: ‘I was making Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas and her, I suppose her desires were she wanted a relationship, she wanted a proper relationship with me and I didn’t want that.
‘I didn’t feel the same about her as she did me and, I suppose, from that moment on she became very, very angry and, since then, I have not spoken to Ms Barkin. Nor has Ms Barkin spoken to me.’
Heard showing injuries she claims were inflicted by Johnny Depp as he allegedly smashed her iPhone in her face at her LA home in May 2016, a month after Heard allegedly ‘defecated’ in their marital bed on her 30th birthday
Depp told the court today that he did not believe Heard’s tiny Yorkshire terrier Pistol (left with Heard in New York in 2012) could have defecated in the bed, and blamed Heard’s trans activist friend iO Tillet Wright (right)
AMBER’S 30TH BIRTHDAY PARTY
Sasha Wass QC, representing The Sun’s publisher News Group Newspapers, began today’s hearing by asking Depp about Heard’s 30th birthday party at the Eastern Columbia Building in LA in April 2016.
The barrister said Depp had arrived late at the party after being given some ‘rather unfortunate news’ about his financial affairs at a meeting.
She asked him: ‘Did you ingest any recreational drugs to relieve your stress?’
He replied: ‘Very likely that I would have smoked some marijuana to calm myself.’
Ms Wass then said Depp had arrived at about 10pm and the rest of the party had finished dinner and were drinking magnums of wine.
Depp said: ‘I was in a low state in my mind, it wasn’t a pleasant thing I had just been through.’
Ms Wass asked: ‘Your account of this evening is that you went to bed after the guests had gone and you were reading… no conversation with Ms Heard?’
Depp replied: ‘Ms Heard was venting how upset she was that I was so late for her birthday dinner and that I had made a fool of her and that I didn’t care and everybody was talking about how awful it was of me to do such a thing and it ramped up and became aggressive… she was very, very angry.’
He added: ‘I was lying in bed after the birthday dinner, I got in the bed and started reading, trying to avoid any confrontation with Ms Heard.’
Ms Wass asked Depp if he was really reading a book on his ex-wife’s birthday when she had said she was upset he was late to her party.
He replied: ‘I thought her behaviour regarding the subject of my tardiness to her birthday dinner, I though that it was too much… her anger, her rage… when I had been texting Ms Heard, telling her ‘I am so sorry, I’m going to be late’.’
The actor then said he did not recall which book he was reading, or whether it was a book or one of his journals.
He added: ‘But the reason that I went straight to bed to start to read was because I was trying to avoid yet another confrontation with Ms Heard about something that didn’t go exactly as she had planned or expected.
‘I didn’t want to discuss it because she wasn’t talking about her sadness in the sense that she was devastated by my hour and a half or whatever of lateness, she was rather angry and rather aggressive, therefore I tried to avoid a conversation or a fight.’
The barrister suggested that Heard ‘did raise the issue of you being late to her 30th birthday party and she was upset’, adding: ‘And I suggest you took that as criticism.’
Depp said: ‘It was indeed criticism.’
Ms Wass said: ‘And you don’t like being criticised.’
Depp replied: ‘I don’t mind being criticised at all, but that was beyond criticism. She was lighting me up.’
Ms Wass then suggested: ‘This provoked you to become angry… and you were very near, at the time you became angry, a magnum of a bottle of champagne.’
She added: ‘And you got out of bed in order to argue with Ms Heard.’
Depp said: ‘No, ma’am.’
The barrister said Depp was ‘very distressed about the news you had received and the last thing you wanted to be told was that you were a disappointment to your wife’.
Depp replied: ‘I believe that’s the last thing any husband would want to hear.’
THE ‘DEFECATION INCIDENT’
Ms Wass then asked Depp about ‘the defecation incident’, when there were faeces in his and Heard’s bed in their LA penthouse.
The barrister suggested that Boo, one of the couple’s two Yorkshire terriers, ‘had problems with her toilet habits’.
Depp said the dogs ‘were very well trained’, but that ‘Boo was not as trained as Pistol’, their other dog.
Ms Wass said to Depp that ‘it came to your attention the following, that was the day of Amber’s actual birthday, that the cleaner had found faeces in the bed’.
Ms Wass continued that Depp was later sent photographs of the faeces, which the actor found ‘hilarious’.
He said in a text: ‘Not sure I’ve laughed that hard for years. At least the photos are hilarious.’
Ms Wass added: ‘There were jokes like ‘Amber Turd’, ‘Amber in the dumps’ going on.’
Depp replied: ‘It was one of the most absurd, unexpected statements that I have ever witnessed in my life so, yes, initially I did laugh because it was so strange.’
He added that it was ‘a mystery’ who defecated in the bed ‘and it was not left by a three or four-pound dog’.
Ms Wass asked him if he ‘accused Ms Heard’s friends of defecating in the bed’.
He replied: ‘I was convinced that it was either Ms Heard herself or one of her cohort involved in leaving human faeces on the bed.’
Ms Wass said he had accused iO Tillet Wright, who was ‘part of the conspiracy’ to make allegations of domestic violence against Depp, of defecating in the bed.
The actor said: ‘iO Tillet Wright seemed the only one that would be crass enough to commit such an act.’
‘I did not want anything to do with her anymore I thought that was a strangely oddly fitting end to the relationship,’ he added.
The actor said the incident was the denouement of the pair’s turbulent marriage and he later filed for divorce despite still ‘having strong feelings’ for his former spouse.
‘As difficult as it was as I had very strong feelings for Ms Heard at the time, it wasn’t an easy decision to make but since we had gone back and forth back and forth I had to leave,’ he said.
‘I wasn’t ready to go back there and get myself in the same situation I had been in all those years.’
Depp said in his witness statement that, since the April 2016 incident, Heard ‘repeatedly tried to contact me either directly or through her sister’.
Ms Wass asked if Heard was ‘pestering’ him, to which the actor said: ‘I didn’t feel pestered. I wouldn’t describe it as pestered at all, but there were attempts to get to me from Whitney Heard and from Amber.’
He added: ‘I wasn’t in a mindset – I didn’t want anything to do with her any more.’
Depp said he thought the April 2016 ‘defecation incident’ was ‘a fitting end to the relationship’.
Ms Wass read a text from Depp to Heard’s then agent Christian Carino on May 4, which said: ‘Look, brother. If she needs me she knows exactly how to get me.
‘I’ve had nothing from her. Is her ego and pride more durable and potent than her most legitimate and most deeply-felt emotions?’
Ms Wass said the text showed that Depp was ‘upset that she hadn’t contacted you’.
Depp said that he thought ‘that was a valid question in terms of Ms Heard’s attitude towards things’.
Ms Wass then took Depp to a text exchange between him and Heard on May 15, in which he said: ‘Call when you get this.’
The barrister said: ‘This wasn’t Ms Heard asking her sister (to ask you) to try and get back in touch with Ms Heard. You were in touch with her.’
Depp replied: ‘We were in touch, though it wasn’t on the same level. Our relationship wasn’t – it was virtually non-existent.’
Ms Wass read another text to Heard which said: ‘All my love and regrets. I wish you nothing but good. Johnny.’
She added: ‘So you were talking in a civilised way, it wasn’t a question of her pestering you in any way.’
Depp said: ‘I never used the word pester.’
He repeated the text he had sent to Heard before adding: ‘That is what I felt… I didn’t think there needed to be any poison at that time, because that part was over, which was the relationship and now we just had to finish it.’
Ms Wass then told the court that in May 2016 Depp’s mother had lapsed into a coma and he sent Heard a message which read: ‘I am with Betty Sue, this will be it… the end is nigh.
‘I have spoken your words of love and respect to her… she is ready to split.’
Ms Wass said Heard had been very kind to Depp’s mother, who died on May 20, 2016.
She asked the actor: ‘Did you deal with the stress and sadness of losing your mother by numbing the pain with the usual methods?’ Depp replied: ‘No ma’am.’
Depp told the court: ‘There was quite a lot going on aside from the fact I was in a very bad financial state as my business manager and lawyers had conspired to steal a lot of my money.
‘My mom was in a coma, she then passed away, Amber and I were on the outs and it was looking like forever on the outs, but I tried to maintain a good relationship with Ms Heard, a friendly relationship.’
Ms Wass then suggested to Depp that he dealt with the stress of all that by hitting drink and controlled drugs.
He replied: ‘My answer to that, is that is not the case. There was so much to deal with on such profoundly important and sensitive levels that I could not escape into any drug, liquor, pain-free setting.
‘I did not inebriate myself to the point of numbness, I had too much to deal with and I had to be on the ball.’
THE ‘PHONE THROWING’ INCIDENT
Ms Wass asked Depp about an alleged incident on May 23, 2016 when he went to the LA penthouse where Heard was staying to collect some belongings with his private security guards Jerry Judge and Sean Betts.
Depp said he asked them to wait outside the front door and enter if they heard any commotion.
He added: ‘I was worried that Ms Heard was going to start screaming and starting a fight and I asked them that the second they heard any screaming, any fight, that they came in.’
The actor said: ‘I went there and I knew that I had to be cautious of what might occur under the circumstances.’
The Sun’s lawyer said Heard was on the phone to iO Tillett Wright, who was laughing at Depp’s suggestion that he was the friend of Heard who was responsible for defecating in the bed.
She said the actor picked the phone up at one stage and told Wright he had ‘got what you want, you can have her, I don’t care, it’s over’.
The barrister then said he was ‘screaming obscenities at Mr Tillett Wright’, to which he responded: ‘I had very little conversation with Mr Tillett Wright, as Mr Tillett Wright and I hadn’t spoken in probably two years.’
Ms Wass said: ‘Then you threw the phone on the sofa’, to which Depp replied: ‘Yes, I was walking away and I flipped it onto the couch.’
The Sun’s lawyer said Heard then retrieved the phone and her friend Wright was telling her to get out of the flat.
Depp said: ‘He may have been… I don’t recall Mr Tillett Wright saying get out of the house.’
Depp told the court today that he did not believe Heard’s tiny Yorkshire terrier Pistol (left) could have defecated in the bed, and blamed Heard’s trans activist friend iO Tillet Wright (right)
Depp and Heard pictured leaving the Southport Magistrates’ Court in Gold Coast, Australia in April 2016
Ms Wass said: ‘You then grabbed the phone from her a second time and you threw it – not on the sofa this time – but you wound your arm, like someone throwing a baseball, and you threw it at Ms Heard.’
The barrister said the phone made contact with the side of Heard’s face. Depp replied: ‘No ma’am.’
The actor then denied a series of assertions made by Ms Wass, including that he asked Heard if she would like it if he pulled her hair back and that Wright told Heard to call 911 and also sent a text to another friend, Raquel Pennington, saying Depp was attacking Heard.
Ms Wass said: ‘Your suggestion is that these texts are a carefully choreographed hoax?’, to which he replied: ‘A choreographed hoax, yes.’
The Sun’s QC said another friend of Heard who lived nearby, Raquel Pennington, came into the apartment after receiving the text from Wright and ‘physically put herself between you and Ms Heard’.
Depp said: ‘Ms Heard was on the couch and I was about 20 feet away, so between us? No, she did not.’
Ms Wass then put to Depp that he pushed Pennington out of the way, Heard collapsed on the sofa and she was comforted by her friend, to which he responded: ‘No ma’am.’
The barrister said to Depp that he was ‘screaming at Ms Heard to get up’ and then picked up a magnum of wine and started swinging it around, smashing things with it. He said: ‘I disagree.’
Ms Wass said at that point his security guards Jerry Judge and Sean Betts entered and Heard said: ‘If he hits me one more time I will call the police.’
Depp replied: ‘They ran into the flat when they heard Ms Heard screaming ‘stop hitting me Johnny, stop hitting me Johnny’.
She was still screaming ‘stop hitting me Johnny’
‘When they ran in she was still screaming ‘stop hitting me Johnny’ and I was 20 feet away by the refrigerator… and she then changed it to past tense ‘you will never hit me again’ and Jerry Judge said ‘Boss, let’s get out of here’.’
Ms Wass showed Depp photos of Heard, taken on May 27, ‘showing a red mark on her cheek’ and asked: ‘Do you accept that there is a red mark on her cheek?’
Depp replied: ‘I see a red mark, yes.’
Ms Wass then said: ‘I suggest you caused that red mark when you threw the phone at her.’
The actor responded: ‘No, ma’am, not true.’
Ms Wass said Depp left the penthouse at about 8.30pm and saw Heard’s friend Pennington ‘had been working there (in a neighbouring apartment Mr Depp owned) on some bead making that she was doing’.
She added: ‘You were very angry at that stage.’
Depp said he was.
Ms Wass then played CCTV footage of Depp entering a lift as he was leaving the apartment and said: ‘I am going to suggest that you were wired up and angry in that footage.’
She also said to Depp that he was ‘clenching your fists’.
Depp replied: ‘I can safely say I was very upset, yes, I was angry and upset.’
‘I loved you more than anything… I did everything that I could. But, you never f*****’ loved me… I was merely convenient for you’
Ms Wass then read an ‘angry text’ sent to Amber Heard, her friend Pennington and Pennington’s fiance Josh Drew, which was ‘sent in the early hours of the following morning’.
The message read: ‘That was it. The last encounter forever. You were already ready to strike!!!
‘Why did I even come there in the first place?? To be yelled at by you!!! I’m an idiot.’
It added: ‘I tried to make it work and you just turned more and more into a spoiled brat. All you wanted was to make me f****** miserable.
‘Well, I’m finally there. I’ll never be able to understand how I fell in love with you… You’re not her.
‘I loved you more than anything… I did everything that I could. But, you never f*****’ loved me… I was merely convenient for you…
‘I hope our divorce goes as quickly as possible and that it is as painless as possible. So sorry you were as unhappy with me, as you were…
‘Obviously, the purity of whatever was, has been gone for a long time. I will miss the moments of beauty and truth… goodbye, Amber…
‘What the f*** was I thinking?? I wish you all you merit.’
Ms Wass then asked: ‘Why were you placating her at this stage? There was no need to placate her, why did you apologise?’
Depp replied: ‘That was a sincere apology… I wasn’t placating her at that time, there was no need to.’
Ms Wass said: ‘It was a sincere apology for hitting her in the face with a telephone.’
Depp said: ‘No, ma’am.’
He added that he was ‘apologising to Ms Heard essentially because the relationship was gone, dead, and that was why I said ‘all my love’… I couldn’t make it work’.
Ms Wass said that, by June 4, Depp ‘had become very bitter to Ms Heard’.
Depp said: ‘I was feeling quite bitter, yes.’
‘I want Amber Heard replaced on that Warner Brothers Aquaman film’
Ms Wass then read a text from Depp to Heard’s agent Christian Carino which said: ‘I want her replaced on that WB (Warner Brothers) film.’
Ms Wass said: ‘It’s a message about the Warner Brothers film she did, Aquaman, and there was going to be a sequel Aquaman that was originally going to have Ms Heard in it.
‘And after this… a petition was formed which attracted, I think, 400,000 signatures that she should be removed.’
She added: ‘You orchestrated that, didn’t you, you wanted to get your own back?’
Depp replied: ‘No, I didn’t orchestrate the petition by saying I wanted her replaced on the Aquaman film. I had been characterised globally, as some put it, as a wife beater.’
He added that he had gone from ‘Cinderella to Quasimodo in 0.6 seconds and I was without a voice at that point’.
‘Ms Heard had made sure that the news media had caught it so that was where I was in my life,’ Mr Depp said. ‘It was a very unpleasant place to be.’
Depp threatens to slice off Elson Musk’s ‘d***’ – and cut himself
Ms Wass then asked about a text message sent on August 16, the day after the couple’s divorce settlement, to Christian Carino which read: ‘She’s begging for global humiliation. She’s gonna get it.
‘I’m gonna need your texts about San Francisco brother… I’m sorry to even ask… But she sucked Mollusk’s (a reference to Elon Musk) crooked dick and he gave her some shitty lawyers.
‘I have no mercy, no fear and not an ounce of emotion or what I thought was love for this gold digging, low level, dime a dozen, mushy, pointless dangling overused flappy fish market…
‘I’m so happy she wants to go to fight this out. She will hit the wall hard. And I cannot wait to have this waste of a cum guzzler out of my life. She will hit the wall hard.
‘I met a f****** sublime little Russian here… which made me realise that time I blew on the 50 cent stripper… I would not touch her with a goddam glove.
‘I can only hope that karma kicks in and takes the gift of breath form her. Sorry man but now I will stop at nothing!’
Ms Wass then played a largely unintelligible audio recording, which she said showed Depp ‘playing with a knife’ and ‘threatening to cut yourself in front of Ms Heard’.
Depp said he threatened to cut himself because ‘I thought that’s what she was doing anyway’.
Other photos show bruising across the bridge of Heard’s nose and beneath her eyes after Depp allegedly headbutted her in December 2015. The trial is hearing evidence about 14 such incidents
Photos of a cracked bed frame (left) and tufts of blonde hair (right) from the fight in December 2015 were submitted by Heard last year during defamation proceedings in the US
Johnny Depp (left) and Amber Heard leaving the High Court in London on Thursday. Depp is suing The Sun newspaper after it described him as a ‘wife beater’ following claims by Heard that he repeatedly attacked her during their relationship.
DAY THREE: Recording of Depp admitting ‘accidentally’ headbutting Heard is played in court with photos of her bruised face after ‘assaulting her and pulling out her hair after she found out he was cheating on her with an ex-girlfriend
During cross-examination at the High Court in London yesterday, Depp said he accidentally headbutted his ex-wife during a heated argument, in which he is said to have been ‘in an uncontrollable rage’.
The court heard a recording of a conversation between the couple shortly after the December 2015 incident, in which Depp appears to say he only headbutted her in the ‘f***ing forehead’ – which he said ‘doesn’t break a nose’.
Heard says in the recording: ‘ You can headbutt somebody who’s screaming but don’t scream’
Depp replies : ‘I headbutted you in the f***ing… forehead. That doesn’t break a nose’.
In his rampage at their home in 2015, Depp allegedly overturned rails of designer clothes, yanked a bedside light fitting from the wall and scrawled graffiti and slogans over a kitchen counter top with a gold pen.
The Sun’s QC Sasha Wass, cross-examining Depp, told him: ‘You lost your temper. You threw a decanter. You punched the walls, slapped Heard, grabbed her by the hair.’ The actor replied: ‘No.’
Ms Heard ran upstairs and Depp chased her, said Ms Wass, adding: ‘You smacked the back of her head and shoved her. You completely lost your self-control. You headbutted Ms Heard using the top of your head to head hit her between the eyes. Miss Heard fell backwards and her nose began to bleed straight away.’
Depp said that was not true.
‘And in the bedroom, you grabbed her by the throat and pushed her on the bed, slapped her across the face, saying you are going to kill her. You were in an uncontrollable rage, smothering her, screaming you were going to kill her, and hated her. The bed broke under the force of your weight. You pulled out clumps of her hair.’
Depp: ‘No ma’am.’ Ms Wass said the actress ran screaming to the bathroom saying he had broken her nose. The court was shown a photo of Ms Heard taken the next day, with ‘the beginning of two black eyes’.
Depp claimed the allegation was ‘another wonderful thing to put in the kaleidoscope of her dossier that she (Heard) is building’.
He added: ‘This injury that she would’ve suffered is not consistent with the photographs that she has given to the court.
‘She was swinging wildly at me, and I … from behind, as I was walking away from the argument to my office, she was hitting me in the neck, ear, back, everything.
Photos after the December incident show bruising to Heard’s face after Depp allegedly headbutted her. The trial is hearing evidence about 14 such incidents
Photos after the December incident show bruising to Heard’s face after Depp allegedly headbutted her. The trial is hearing evidence about 14 altercations
‘I turned to cover my head and she was swinging quite wildly so the only thing I could do in that situation was either to run or to try to get hold of her, to get my arms around her to stop her flailing and punching me, so I did so, as I did so it seems there was a collision.’
Depp demonstrated with his arms how he claims he took hold of Heard and said she was ‘kicking and moving’ so there was ‘very close contact’ between them.
He added: ‘That is the only collision and the only potential injury that Ms Heard could have had, there is no way I did as she said and broke her nose.’
Depp told the court: ‘She immediately said ‘you headbutted me’, and in that moment when I tried to grab her around her arms and her body to control the violence, she immediately said ‘you headbutted me’ and screamed and ran away.
The court was also shown photographs of the injuries Heard is said to have suffered, as well as pictures Depp said showed him with ‘scratches and swelling around my face’ he claimed his ex-wife had inflicted.
Ms Wass asked why he had not mentioned ‘accidentally’ headbutting Heard in his witness statements to the court.
He replied: ‘Had I read the entire statement after the lawyers had drafted it, I would have found that missing piece. I didn’t read all those things … and I trusted my attorneys had taken my statement and put it on the record.’
Depp said he used the word ‘headbutt’ because that was the word Heard used, telling the court: ‘I said ‘I headbutted you in the forehead, that doesn’t break a nose’.’
Ms Wass put it to the actor that he had changed his account of the incident after he became aware of an audio recording of himself and Heard discussing the incident ‘very recently’.
But Depp said: ‘I believe she took something and stretched it out as far as she possibly could.’
He added that Heard would tell her friends things so that they would ‘hate’ him, adding: ‘Another piece for her collection. It is quite a collection.’
The recording was played in which the couple seemed to be discussing the headbutt, with Miss Heard saying: ‘I couldn’t believe you did that,’ and her husband apparently saying: ‘I headbutted you in the ****ing forehead. That doesn’t break a nose.’
Ms Wass then asked the actor about text messages between Amber Heard and her mother, Paige Heard, and himself and his ex-wife’s father, David Heard.
The barrister said that, after Ms Heard sent her mother photographs of the bruises on her face, her mother replied saying she loved her ‘so damn much, I will do anything for you’.
The message from Mrs Heard to her daughter continued: ‘Your dad sent Steve (Mr Depp) a scathing text message … he compared you to Lily-Rose (Depp) and how JD would feel. Your dad’s blood is boiling.’
Ms Wass then read out a message sent by David Heard to Mr Depp which read: ‘I’m not mad, I understand, a man has got to be a man and I am not saying that you were completely justified, but I understand.
‘I’m talking to Paige and I think I understand what is going on a little better.
‘I would say no more hitting for anybody. I think you and Amber, Jack and Lily-Rose should go to the island for a few days and let me talk to Amber and tell her what she needs to stop doing.’
The message continued with Mr Heard saying that his daughter should never hit Mr Depp and that ‘the same goes for you’.
Mr Heard’s message concluded by saying: ‘I know that Amber needs help with her temper the same way you need help with drugs and alcohol.’
He said his daughter was ‘not blameless’, adding: ‘She is my kid and I love her unconditionally.’
Mr Depp said he explained to both Ms Heard’s parents that there was a discussion which ‘got out of control’ and Ms Heard got violent.
Ms Wass asked if the actor had told his in-laws that he ‘f***** up and went too far’ in fights between the couple.
He replied: ‘That is very possible as things got very heated and (we were) yelling verbal obscenities at each other and it was horrific, but I never once said to David and Paige ‘I have hit your daughter and I’m sorry’.’
Ms Wass then asked Mr Depp about a message he sent to his father-in-law in reply, in which he said: ‘Yes I f***** up and went too far in our fight.’
Mr Depp said: ‘It expresses to Mr Heard that I was sorry for my part in the argument.
‘I have sent many texts to Mr Heard and Mrs Heard but there is nowhere in there that I say ‘I hit your daughter’.’
He added: ‘When things go too far and they begin to escalate, you start screaming when you are being screamed at, you react and you scream back and these hideous exchanges did happen and they happened quite often.’
‘One cannot fly with one wing, so in an argument there are two involved.
‘One can escalate the situation or one can de-escalate the situation, it depends on the moment … I was being as honest with Mr Heard as I could be.’
Ms Wass earlier said that Depp threw a decanter at Heard, punched the walls and pulled her up the stairs by her hair, removing ‘clumps’ from her scalp in the December 2015 fight.
She added that Depp also goaded Heard, saying ‘you think you’re a f****** tough guy?’, before he ‘grabbed her by the throat and pushed her onto the bed’ then ‘slapped her across the face saying you were going to kill her’.
In a written statement submitted by the defence about the alleged incident, it was said: ‘Ms Heard and the Claimant were in their penthouse in Los Angeles.
‘The Claimant threw another decanter at her, knocked items around the room and punched the wall. He slapped her hard, grabbed her by her hair, and dragged her through the apartment.
‘In the process, the Claimant pulled large chunks of hair and scalp out of Ms Heard’s head.
‘Ms Heard tried to escape the violence by going upstairs. The Claimant followed Ms Heard, hit her in the back of her head, again grabbed her by her hair, then dragged her by her hair up the last few steps.
‘At the top of the stairs, the Claimant shoved her twice, which made her fear that she would fall.
‘Ms Heard told the Claimant that he had broken her wrist in an attempt to get him to stop.
‘The Claimant repeatedly hit Ms Heard, knocking her to the floor. Each time Ms Heard was knocked down, she stood back up.
‘The Claimant responded by veiling, ‘Oh, you think you’re a f**ing tough guy?’ He then head-butted her in her face, bashing her nose, which immediately began bleeding and caused her searing pain.
‘When Ms Heard said to the Claimant, ‘You head-butted me’, he responded, ‘I just gave you a little knock with my head’.
‘The Claimant then said what a ‘f*** up’ he was and left the room.
‘Later, Ms Heard told the Claimant that she wanted to leave him, and that she would call the police if he ever touched her again.
‘When she then began to walk away towards the guest apartment, the Claimant pushed her. He then grabbed her and pulled her from one room to the next, gripping her by her hair.
‘By the time the Claimant had dragged Ms Heard into the upstairs office, she had told him she was leaving him as she could not put up with his behaviour any longer.
‘The Claimant reacted by grabbing Ms Heard by her throat, pushing her down to the ground, and punching her in the back of her head.
‘The Claimant grabbed Ms Heard by her hair, slapped her in the face, and screamed at her, ‘I f***ing will kill you – I’ll f***ing kill you, you hear me?
‘The fight continued onto a bed. The Claimant got on top of Ms Heard and placed his knee on her back and the other foot on the bedframe while repeatedly punching her in her head.
‘The Claimant screamed, ‘I f***ing hate you’ over and over again.
‘The bedframe splintered under the weight of the pressure of the Claimant’s boot. The Claimant hit Ms Heard with his closed fists, pushed her face into the mattress, and pulled out chunks of her hair.
‘Ms Heard screamed and feared for her life. She suffered severe headaches and other pain for at least a week after this incident.
‘During this incident, the Claimant also wrote a message on the kitchen countertop in gold pen that said, ‘Why be a fraud? All is such bulls***’.’
Depp is alleged to have trashed a $3million penthouse in LA which Heard used as a colossal closet
Depp (left, leaving the High Court) is suing The Sun after it described him as a ‘wife beater’ following claims by ex-wife Heard (right, leaving the court with her girlfriend Bianca Butti) that he repeatedly attacked her during their relationship
Heard leaving the High Court in London with ‘Team Heard’, including her girlfriend Bianca Butti (front left)
Depp was on the stand at the High Court for a third day yesterday and was questioned about the incident after he previously claimed the injury was sustained when Heard threw a vodka bottle at him during the fight in Australia
Amber Heard arrived at the High Court yesterday with her sister Whitney (wearing a green covering) after going out on the town with her until the early hours on the third day of Johnny Depp’s blockbuster libel trial in London
Ms Wass put it to Depp that, by December 2015, ‘you were routinely using violence against Ms Heard when you were intoxicated and when you were angry’.
Depp said: ‘I say that is incorrect. Most of the time I tried to get away.’
He added: ‘Most of the time, Ms Heard’s problem was that I would run away from fights and I was then called a coward and a pussy for trying to avoid an escalation.’
The December 2015 incident is one of 14 alleged incidents of domestic violence, all denied by Depp, relied on by NGN in their defence against the actor’s libel claim.
Depp will continue to give evidence on Friday.
Depp ‘assaulted Amber Heard and her sister in his LA penthouse after his ex-wife found out he was cheating on her with an ex-girlfriend’
Ms Wass then asked about an incident in March 2015 at the couple’s LA penthouse, one of five Depp owned on the same floor, with Heard’s sister Whitney Henriquez then living in an adjoining apartment.
Ms Wass said: ‘In March 2015, after the Australia incident, the relationship between you and Ms Heard wasn’t great but it was still going ahead. You didn’t file for divorce, contrary to your feelings.’
Depp replied: ‘I didn’t file for divorce, but I didn’t have much hope for our future.’
Ms Wass said the couple then ‘had an argument because she found out you were having an affair with Rochelle (Hathaway)’.
Depp said: ‘Well, she was quite jealous of Rochelle and several other people, so I don’t know that she found out I was having an affair.’
Ms Wass continued: ‘You had been drinking, you were extremely angry and you were very angry that Ms Heard had the temerity to suggest you had been having an affair.
‘She was very cross that day, wasn’t she?’
Depp said: ‘She was very cross.’
He added: ‘I didn’t like being screamed at and demeaned and being treated like something less than the person in front of me.’
Ms Wass said Depp started ‘smashing things’ and destroying clothes in Heard’s wardrobe.
Depp said: ‘It’s very easy for her to say that I did it.’
Ms Wass continued: ‘So this must be another aspect of the hoax – she destroyed her own clothes in order to photograph them in order to store them up.’
Depp said: ‘She was building a wonderful dossier, an insurance policy, for when we did break up.’
Ms Wass said Heard then ‘ran over to her sister through the connecting door’ to a next-door apartment.
The barrister said Heard was ‘shouting that (Mr Depp) had cheated on her’, and Depp followed her with ‘an empty bottle of whisky’.
Ms Wass suggested to Depp that he was ‘speaking rather incoherently … and you were denying having an affair and then, on the other hand, you were saying that Ms Heard made you do so’.
Depp denied having an affair and said: ‘I don’t recall seeing Rochelle at the time.’
Ms Wass continued: ‘She was shouting abuse at you saying ‘f*** you’ and you responded, didn’t you?’
Depp said: ‘She was out of control and she was looking for a physical fight.’
Ms Wass said: ‘She’s shouting at you and you were shouting back, calling her a ‘whore’ and ‘an ugly old c***’.’
Depp said that exchange ‘doesn’t sound extraordinary whatsoever’.
Ms Wass continued: ‘You were screaming ‘f*** you bitches, you c****’ to both Whitney and Ms Heard.’
She added: ‘And you started coming to the staircase … Whitney was standing at the edge of the staircase and you pushed Whitney out of the way so you could hit Ms Heard.’
Depp said that was ‘untrue’.
Ms Wass suggested Heard said ‘don’t hit my sister’ and then hit Depp, which he said was true.
The barrister added: ‘And that was the first time that Ms Heard hit and caused injury to you.’
Depp replied: ‘That’s not true.’
Ms Wass said: ‘You grabbed Amber Heard by the hair and then you hit her in the head … and then Whitney took Ms Heard back to (her penthouse) and at that stage you were smashing things.’
She added that he was shouting ‘f****** c****, f****** whores, I hate you’.
Depp said: ‘I did nothing violent … but possibly tried to protect myself, if that’s considered violent.’
Johnny Depp wrote ‘I love you’ in blood after severing his finger while attacking ME, says Amber Heard: Actor ‘pushed his wife into a ping pong table, tore off her night gown, and choked her against refrigerator while filming Pirates of The Caribbean’
Amber Heard also claimed in court on Thursday that Johnny Depp severed his finger while launching a savage attack on her in which she ‘feared for her life’ – before writing ‘I love you’ in blood on the wall of their rental home while filming Pirates of the Caribbean in 2015.
Depp was on the stand at the High Court for a third day and was questioned about the incident after he previously claimed the injury was sustained when Heard threw a vodka bottle at him during the fight in Australia.
The 34-year-old actress alleged in a written statement that she was subjected to ‘a three-day ordeal of physical assault which left her with injuries including a broken lip, swollen nose, and cuts all over her body’.
Depp vehemently denied the accusation from the stand and branded it ‘pedestrian fiction’ in court. He claimed the ordeal occurred over one day, not three, and said the top of his finger was ‘lopped’ off when his ex-wife threw a vodka bottle at him after discovering he wanted her to sign a post-nuptial agreement.
He admitted using his blood to write the love message on a mirror inside their Queensland mansion by way of apology and the picture of the graffiti on the mirror was shown in court.
In a witness statement submitted by Heard, she says: ‘The Claimant [Depp] shoved Ms Heard into a ping pong table, threw bottles through the window panels of a glass door, then grabbed Ms Heard and tore off her nightgown. The Claimant grabbed Ms Heard by her hair and choked her against the refrigerator in the kitchen.’
It says that Depp then ‘grabbed Ms Heard by the neck and collarbone, slammed her against the countertop, and strangled her. Ms Heard’s arms and feet were slashed by the broken glass on the kitchen countertop and floor. She was scared for her life and told the Claimant, ‘You are hurting and cutting me”.’
‘The Claimant ignored her, continued to hit her with the back of one closed hand, and slammed a hard plastic telephone against a wall with his other hand until it smashed. While he was smashing the telephone, the Claimant severely injured his finger, cutting off the tip. Once Ms Heard had managed to escape from the Claimant, she barricaded herself in a bedroom.’
Depp also admitted to doing graffiti on a bathroom mirror after the fight with Heard, which resulted in his finger being severed. He admitted that some of it was done with his blood and some with paint
Depp was on the stand at the High Court for a third day and was questioned about the incident after he previously claimed the injury was sustained when Heard threw a vodka bottle at him during the fight in Australia
When asked about the attack in Australia which Heard called a ‘three-day hostage ordeal’, Depp replied: ‘The three-day period that Ms Heard speaks about or alleges was not a three-day ordeal at all. It happened in one day.’
He added: ‘I think it was Sunday and that was the morning where she had started yelling at me because she had been forced to sign, asked to sign, a post-nup (post-nuptial agreement).’
Ms Wass responded that it was ‘nothing to do with that’, saying: ‘She was upset and angry herself that you were drinking to excess and you were taking pills. There was a large bag of pills that you had been supplied with that you told her was MDMA.’
Depp denied having any MDMA or ‘drinking from the bottle’ while in Australia.
Ms Wass continued: ‘And when she (Ms Heard) told you she was unhappy about this, you made a point of putting a handful of pulls straight into your mouth and you did this to make the point that you could do, as you said to Nathan Holmes, whatever you damn please.’
Depp said: ‘No, ma’am.’
Ms Wass suggested that ‘the more angry Ms Heard became to you, you turned’ and used ‘violence’ against her.
The barrister said: ‘You slapped her across the face.’
Depp replied: ‘Not true.’
Ms Wass said: ‘And on the Friday you had a cigarette in your right hand, as you do most of the time, and you threatened to put it out on your face.
‘And you were completely off your head on drink and drugs.’
Depp said: ‘It didn’t happen.’
Ms Wass said Heard ‘stormed off upstairs… and she stayed upstairs and barricaded herself in the bedroom so you couldn’t get in, she pushed furniture against the bedroom door’.
The barrister suggested that Depp ‘stayed up all night taking ecstasy’ and when Ms Heard came down the following morning the actor was ‘playing music very loudly’.
Ms Wass asked if Depp recalled ‘lines of cocaine on the breakfast bar’ and ‘drinking Jack Daniels from the bottle’.
Depp said: ‘No, ma’am. Didn’t happen.’
‘You turned on her, grabbed her by the throat and held her up against the fridge and you said to her ‘it would be easy to crush your neck’
Ms Wass said Heard ‘tried to take the bottle off you and said you shouldn’t be drinking because of the medication’.
She added: ‘And you turned on her, you told her that everything your friends had told you about her was right, your friends all hated her, you didn’t love her and you grabbed her by the throat and held her up against the fridge and you said to her ‘it would be easy to crush your neck’.’
Depp replied: ‘Fabricated and vicious.’
Ms Wass said Heard then tried to go upstairs and Depp stopped her, before he ‘pushed her around and you actually spat in her face… all this time holding a bottle of spirits and drinking from it’.
The barrister continued: ‘At one stage you offered the bottle to Ms Heard, you were goading her, drinking from it, and Ms Heard took a bottle and she smashed it to the ground.’
Depp said: ‘No, ma’am.’
Ms Wass said: ‘And that just, Mr Depp, set you off and you picked up another bottle and threw it at the wall… bottle after bottle, like you enjoyed smashing things.’
Depp said: ‘I don’t enjoy smashing things. The accusations are untrue.’
Ms Wass said Depp then ‘broke the window of the house’ and ‘threw Ms Heard against a ping pong table which collapsed’, which Depp denied.
The barrister said: ‘When Ms Heard ran from the ping pong table to the kitchen you ran after her and again held her up against the fridge.’
She added: ‘And you were smashing her head so the back of her head was hitting the fridge. And you were blaming her for your behaviour.’
Ms Wass said Depp said: ‘You f****** do this to me every time. You f****** did this.’
Depp said: ‘No, ma’am.’
Ms Wass said: ‘And you accused her of having affairs with her leading man.’
Depp said: ‘Possibly.’
Ms Wass said: ‘At this time, you were particularly fixated with Billy Bob Thornton.’
Depp denied that, adding: ‘After the incident where Ms Heard threw the vodka bottle, the second vodka bottle at me, which severed the top of my finger and crushed the bones, that’s when I began what I feel was probably some species of a breakdown, a nervous breakdown or something.
‘I hadn’t realised that it had been cut off immediately until I felt the warmth… and then I began to write things’
Depp insisted that the only attack on the trip had been launched by Heard when she hurled a vodka bottle at him and caused the infamous injury which cut off the top of his finger
Heard leaving the High Court in London with ‘Team Heard’, including her girlfriend Bianca Butti (front left)
Depp (left, leaving the High Court) is suing The Sun after it described him as a ‘wife beater’ following claims by ex-wife Heard (right, leaving the court with her girlfriend Bianca Butti) that he repeatedly attacked her during their relationship
‘I hadn’t realised that it had been cut off immediately until I felt the warmth… and then I began to write things.’
Ms Wass said to Depp: ‘At one stage when you were in the kitchen screaming at Ms Heard you picked up the wall-mounted telephone.’
She said Depp had the phone ‘in your right hand and you were repeatedly smashing it against the wall’.
Depp replied: ‘That’s possible.’
He added: ‘I remember ripping the phone off the wall.’
Ms Wass asked: ‘By this stage, you were really, really angry, weren’t you?’
Depp said: ‘I had just lost the top of my finger and as a musician – as a human being and as a musician – it is upsetting.’
Ms Wass asked Depp about previously saying that he had been responsible for losing the top of his finger.
Depp replied: ‘I had to give the news to the production company that I would not be working the next day. They asked what happened and I lied to production and to anyone who had anything to do with production.
‘I told them that I had slammed it in a very large accordion door … to protect Ms Heard.’
Ms Wass said that, on the last day the couple were in Australia, Heard ‘came downstairs in the morning … and the house was completely destroyed’.
She said: ‘Everything was broken and shattered, the television, the window, there was paint everywhere and it was clear at that stage that you had very seriously damaged your finger.’
Depp said his finger was ‘bleeding profusely’, prompting Ms Wass to ask why he waited ‘hours and hours before you called for any help’.
The actor denied that was true.
Ms Wass continued: ‘You had written on a mirror. You had written in paint but you had used your finger, your injured finger, in place of a paintbrush so you had dipped your injured finger in the paint and then used your finger to do the graffiti.’
Depp said: ‘At first, I had used my blood.’
Depp was on the stand at the High Court for a third day and was questioned about the incident after he previously claimed the injury was sustained when Heard threw a vodka bottle at him during the fight in Australia
During their visits to Australia in 2015, the couple stayed in this mansion owned by former MotoGp champion Mick Doohan
Ms Wass said: ‘This painting exercise of yours was going on all over the house.’
She added: ‘Somebody who was sober and not under the influence of drugs would have realised or would have felt considerable pain.’
Depp said: ‘Yes, ma’am, I did feel considerable pain.’
Ms Wass said: ‘You didn’t know what you were doing at this stage.’
Depp said: ‘That’s not true, I knew exactly what I was doing.’
He added: ‘For me, at that time, it was the end.
‘I was convinced it was never going to get any better, only worse, and worse was death. So this (the painting) is a message to her, ‘good luck and be careful at the top’, in reference to her ambition to be a big star.’
Ms Wass said to Depp: ‘When Ms Heard came down and saw what I suggest was a state of complete carnage in the house, you showed her your right hand … and said ‘look what you made me do’ and she was the one who told you to phone security.’
Depp replied: ‘I’m afraid that’s not true, it’s incorrect.’
Ms Wass said the actor then told Ms Heard: ‘Is this good enough for you? This is what a f****** idiot I am for loving you.’
Depp replied: ‘Possibly. I could have said that, it was certainly what I was feeling but, as I stated earlier, when I realised that the top of my finger was missing and pouring blood profusely and the bones was sticking out, I believe that I went into some kind of breakdown.’
He added: ‘I was at the end. I couldn’t live, didn’t want to live at that time.’
He smeared blood from the tip of his finger across the walls of the property and said: ‘Look what you made me do’ to his former spouse, the court heard.
Asked whether he had been angry, the Pirates of the Caribbean star said: ‘As a human being and as a musician it’s a little upsetting when you see your bone sticking out.’
Referring to photographs of the damage to the property shown to the court, Ms Wass said: ‘You had written in paint but you had used your injured finger in place of a paintbrush.
‘Yes ma’am at first I was using my blood which was coming out of my finger, that’s what the heart you see at the bottom of that and the U.’
‘There’s another message in lipstick, ‘Call Carly Simon she said it better babe.’
‘Was that a message written on a different occasion?’ Ms Wass asked.
‘That’s Ms Heard,’ replied Depp.
Depp said the accusations of violence were part of a conspiracy to paint him as ‘a wetbrain, a savage, an uncontrollable maniac, a monster etc etc, because they do keep going on.’
He added: ‘I vehemently deny it and would go so far as to say it is pedestrian fiction.
‘I was unhappy with the production of Pirates of the Caribbean, I was unhappy with my life, my relationship, I was far away from my kids. I was unhappy with my life and my relationship with Ms Heard.
‘I was angry by the fact that we were working on the fifth production of Pirates of the Caribbean…and I had to rewrite everything for the character.’
The actor told the High Court he descended into a ‘species of nervous breakdown’ during the 2015 trip to Australia and broke his sobriety because of Heard’s ‘rage-filled rants.’
Heard’s arms and feet were allegedly slashed by shattered glass strewn across the floor as she was chased round the room and slammed against a counter top by Depp, the court heard. She was allegedly forced to barricade herself in after he tore off her nightgown and shoved her onto a ping pong table.
Depp told Ms Wass that she seemed ‘more familiar with MDMA than I am’ when asked whether he had been confronted by his ex-wife about a bag of ecstasy pills during the trip.
The actor said he ‘did not recall taking possession of controlled substances,’ in contrast to claims that he spat in her face after chasing the drugs down with liquor.
He insisted that the only attack on the trip had been launched by Heard when she hurled a vodka bottle at him and caused the infamous injury which cut off the top of his finger.
He allegedly received concerned texts from Hollywood screenwriter and friend Stephen Deuters urging him to ‘take a break’ near the time of the incident.
The Texan allegedly came downstairs one morning in a burgundy negligee given to her as a gift by his private doctor David Kipper, who oversaw Depp’s withdrawal from prescription drugs.
The Sun’s lawyer Sasha Wass QC asked Depp: ‘Mr Deuters was a yes man wasn’t he? He knew how to placate you just like you knew how to placate Ms Heard?’
‘I do not accept that description,’ Depp replied.
Reading a text allegedly sent by Deuters, Ms Wass said: ”All anyone wants to see on the screen is the Johnny Depp they know and love. That said you deserve a break. Take some time off and we can discuss other stuff.’
‘What he’s saying is basically you are wonderful and secondly take a break.’
The message went on: ‘To call it an honour to work for you doesn’t do my feelings on the topic any justice whatsoever, you’re the reason I’m in this business by f*** does this business need you.’
‘On looking on it I would say it was a very very kind gesture and a wonderful attempt by a friend to pull me out of what felt like a constant tailspin of constantly being told ‘you’re wrong and your pardon the term a f***-up and many things like that.
‘Those are things that I can very easily go onto, a state of depression. And so he was trying to take me out of it.’
‘Is that a reference to Ms Heard? Because she would not flatter you?’ Ms Wass asked.
Depp replied: ‘She did flatter me when it was in her interests to do so but there was also a barrage of insults and accusations about things which never happened.’
‘I was far away from my kids and I was unhappy with my life and my relationship with Ms Heard.
‘I was angry that we were working on the third of the Pirates of the Caribbean films and on the others I’d been able to write some of (the script)… The dialogue.’
Amber Heard yesterday claimed that Johnny Depp severed his finger while launching a savage attack on her in which she ‘feared for her life’ while he filmed Pirates of the Caribbean in 2015
‘I need to take a f***ing p***, it’s my house’: Depp ‘drew a ‘fake d***’ on a painting of a woman and urinated on the floor’ in rented Australian home
Depp drew a ‘fake d***’ on a painting of a woman and urinated on the floor in his rent home in Australia while filming Pirates of the Caribbean, the High Court also heard.
Transcripts of a conversation between members of his security team revealed his bodyguards’ ‘concern’ about the impact the wreckage would have on his public image.
The Hollywood legend trashed the rented accommodation during a drug-fuelled binge while filming the third Pirates of the Caribbean film in Australia, it has been said.
Shocking pictures of graffiti-covered mirrors were shown as the court heard how a TV and windows were smashed and the floors were left covered in blood.
Depp maintains he does not recall the extent of the damage caused to the property as he was going through a ‘breakdown’ but his late security guard, Jerry Judge, estimated the figure to be around £150,000.
Mr Judge said in the transcript: ‘The French settee at least two of them need to be recovered. I’ve got a lot of blood off the floor, I’ve scrubbed the paint off to bring it off and the s***… We see how bad it is.
‘What I’m most concerned with now is if the owner sees the house he’ll kick us out and go to the newspapers.’
Ms Wass said: ‘Then there’s a discussion: ‘How can we keep all this quiet?’ One of the functions of the people you employ is to manage your public image isn’t it?’
‘I would say yes they have a concern for my public image, yes,’ Depp replied. ‘I think they would rather not have bad things show up in the press. I’ve of course always been quite a private person.’
Ms Wass, reading another excerpt from the transcript, said: ‘[It’s a] sexy, sexy picture… The same picture in a bikini with her hands on her breasts and what did he do? He painted he drew or painted a fake d*** on her p***y..’
‘Do you remember that?’
Depp stifled laughter as he said: ‘No, I don’t remember that.’
‘That would be quite a big thing, painting a penis on a picture?’ Ms Wass said.
‘Yes. I’m not 100 per cent sure I can say I did that. It is possible,’ he replied. Depp added that he resorted to using paint to deface the homeowner’s property once he had ‘run out’ of blood.
‘I don’t recall defacing a painting. As I said, my state of mind, I was in a kind of breakdown,’ he said.
‘You’re not using the word breakdown to refer to a blackout are you?’ Ms Wass asked.
‘No ma’am I’m well aware of the difference,’ Depp replied. ‘I remember dipping my finger into paint when I ran out of blood to paint with and I could have defaced a painting.’
The actor allegedly stormed outside and yelled: ‘I need to take a f***ing p***, it’s my house,’ and began relieving himself.
Ms Wass said: ‘You shouted: ‘I need to take a f***ing p***, it’s my house’ and you urinated outside the front door.’
‘I don’t believe that happened,’ Depp said.
‘And then you came into the house and did the same thing in the house,’ Ms Wass said.
‘I do not believe that happened, especially seeing as I had a severed finger,’ came the reply.
Ms Wass continued cross examining Depp on the damage in the house, saying there were references to ‘French settees’ which needed re-covering, and she asked: ‘You did the damage, how long did it take you?’
Depp said ‘I was a party to the damage’ and Ms Wass interrupted: ‘Amber Heard broke one bottle.’
The actor replied: ‘Well in fact she threw two bottles at me. The first bottle came whizzing past my head and the second smashed … and cut my fingertip off, so she broke two bottles.’
Depp was then asked if he remembered a television and a window breaking, to which he said no, and if he recalled damage to the settees and floors, to which he replied: ‘Yes I remember there was quite a lot of blood everywhere.’
He was then asked who out of himself and Ms Heard did he think did the most damage to the house, to which he answered: ‘I would say Ms Heard.’
When Ms Wass retorted that was not true, he said: ‘Thank you’.
Ms Wass told the court Mr Judge had told Heard that if he and Depp’s other employees had not stepped in, ‘either you or he would be dead’.
The barrister said: ‘It appears Mr Judge is saying that if they hadn’t come along when they did, either you would be dead or Ms Heard would be dead.
‘That would be an odd thing to say if it was Ms Heard who was the only violent party – do you agree or not?’
Depp replied: ‘There are several times when I have spoken to Ms Heard and said, ‘listen, we are a crime scene waiting to happen’.’
Depp: ‘Heard was unwilling to sign a pre-nup’
Ms Wass asked Mr Depp about the catalyst for the argument, which he says was a post-nuptial agreement Ms Heard did not want to sign.
The actor told the court: ‘Ms Heard, in tears and quite riled up, said to me that the woman (an attorney) had kind of psychologically tortured her and said ‘this is it, you have to sign this’ and she said ‘Johnny would never agree to me signing this’ and she said the lawyer laughed and said ‘oh he is well aware’.’
Ms Wass then said Mr Depp’s employees were concerned about the property’s owner seeing the damage and going to the press.
He responded: ‘Well I think they would rather not have bad things show up in the press. I have always been quite a private person.’
Ms Wass said: ‘This was something your people really wanted to underplay, isn’t it?’
Mr Depp replied: ‘Well yes, as did I, and I said I crushed my finger in a door.’
Depp has described his relationship with Heard as ‘complicated’ as the High Court was told there was ‘a lot of anger’ and a ‘very deep love’ between the couple.
Ms Wass asked the actor about a January 2015 trip to Tokyo he took with Heard and his two children, alleging he had been violent towards Ms Heard in their hotel room and had wrestled her to the floor.
Depp said this was ‘incorrect’.
The barrister later said: ‘It was a very complex relationship with Ms Heard, there was a lot of anger on one level … but there was also a very close connection and a very deep love between the two of you.’
Depp replied: ‘It felt so at the time, yes. It was complicated.’
Ms Wass asked the star about a pre-nuptial and post-nuptial agreement, telling the court that according to Californian divorce laws a wife was entitled to 50 per cent of her husband’s wealth.
Depp said: ‘She (Heard) was unwilling to sign a pre-nup, my attorneys tried for Ms Heard to sign a post-nuptial agreement, which she said she was fine to do.
‘She said she was fine to sign a pre-nup too but it never happened.’
Amber Heard arrived at the High Court yesterday with her sister Whitney (wearing a green covering) after going out on the town with her until the early hours on the third day of Johnny Depp’s blockbuster libel trial in London
The 57-year-old actor was cross-examined on the stand by The Sun’s lawyer and asked about the trip he took with his ex-wife Heard, 34, in August 2014 – while they were engaged to be married
‘One of the cruelest things that she has ever done’: Johnny Depp says Amber Heard withheld his rehab medicine as he lay ‘sobbing like a child’ and going through withdrawal on his private island in the Bahamas
Depp accused Heard of withholding his rehab medicine while he lay ‘sobbing like a child’ as he from suffered from withdrawal on a pre-wedding detox trip to his private island in 2014.
Depp discussed the 2014 trip to the 45-acre island Little Hall Pond’s Cay under cross-examination by The Sun’s QC Sasha Wass and denied kicking Heard, pushing her and grabbing her by the hair while she nursed him through an ‘agonising’ withdrawal from prescription painkiller Roxicodone.
He said he retired to the island – where he married Heard in 2015 and which he bought for $3.5million in 2004 – with Heard and a nurse while he tried to kick his addiction to the prescription drug known as ‘Roxxies’.
In his witness statement, Depp claimed that Heard ‘often intervened and withheld medicine from me’ while the pair were on the island, which he described as ‘one of the cruellest things that she has ever done’.
He told the court how Heard would deny him medicine, leaving him ‘sobbing like a child’ on the floor and having the ‘heebie-jeebies’ and start shaking and having stomach cramps.
Johnny Depp has accused Amber Heard of withholding his rehab medicine while they took a detox trip together to his private island in the Bahamas on the third day of his libel trial in London
Heard is pictured arriving at the High Court with her squad, including her girlfriend Bianca Butti (back left, in sunglasses)
Sasha Wass QC, representing The Sun, told the High Court yesterday how Depp and Heard were on one side of his private island while a nurse, Debbie Lloyd, was staying on the other side
‘He’s flipping, he’s screaming, he’s so mad he pushed me’
Texts exchanged between Heard and an onsite nurse standing by throughout the withdrawal showed her telling medics to come and help when Depp allegedly ‘pushed’ her.
Depp denied kicking Heard and pulling her hair, claiming that he was ‘in no physical condition’ to have assaulted her and calling the accusations her ‘insurance policy’.
Depp told the court how Heard would deny him medicine, leaving him ‘sobbing like a child’ on the floor and having the ‘heebie-jeebies’ and start shaking and having stomach cramps.
Ms Wass told the High Court yesterday how Depp and Heard were on one side of his private island while a nurse, Debbie Lloyd, was staying on the other side.
Referring to a page of text messages in evidence sent by Heard to the nurse, the barrister said: ”Issue seems to have arisen again. All of a sudden he’s flipping. He’s screaming, he’s so mad he pushed me and I asked him to get out. Don’t want to keep you guys.’ The nurse asked: ‘Should we come over?’ and she said yes.
‘Are you aware of any reason that Ms Heard would ask the medics to come over if you were so mad that you pushed her. Can you think why she would write that if it wasn’t the truth?’
Depp said: ‘I can only say from my point of view I was in no physical condition to push anyone. I’m denying I pushed her. I’m going to suggest that the testimony is fabricated.’
‘And this is part of the hoax is it?’ the lawyer asked.
‘I believe it’s part of the dossier that was an insurance policy for her,’ Depp said. ‘I wouldn’t know if she followed the instructions of the nurse to the letter.’
Ms Wass suggested to Depp that Heard was ‘effectively acting as your nurse’.
Depp replied: ‘She was in control of the meds, she was in control of when I was taking the meds, she would give me the time to take the meds.’
Ms Wass asked: ‘She wasn’t the one in detox, was she?’ Depp said that Heard was not.
She added: ‘I am going to suggest you lied about the extent of her drugs use and alcohol consumption in order to discredit her in this court hearing.’ Depp said: ‘No.’
The barrister continued: ‘She was doing what she was being told to do by the experts.’ Depp replied: ‘I don’t know that she explicitly followed the orders of the registered nurse to the letter.’
Ms Wass said: ‘The idea of a detoxification process is you come off drugs.’
She added: ‘She (Ms Heard) was withholding drugs that you were not supposed to have.’ Depp asked: ‘Why would she have drugs that I was not supposed to have?’
Ms Wass also read a text exchange between Depp and his former mother-in-law, Paige Heard, sent during the Bahamas detox trip.
The barrister said Heard wrote ‘please hang in there my son out-law’. The text continued: ‘I know that it doesn’t feel like things will ever get better, but I promise you they will.
‘You’ve gotten through the hardest part, it may be hard to see, but you will be so glad to have this gorilla off of your back. I’ve seen the hell this addiction brings and I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.
‘You are a big wonderful man to break the cycle. Please let me know if I can help in any way. All my love.’
Depp said the messages to his mother-in-law were him saying good things about a daughter to her mother.
The barrister said Depp’s assertion that Heard had withheld his medication during the trip was ‘not substantiated by any evidence’.
He replied that he couldn’t say whether it was substantiated, adding: ‘I can say that there were incidents where, for example, the time allotted for me to take my medication by the nurse or by Ms Heard was 4pm on that date.’
The actor said he would sometimes have the ‘heebie-jeebies’ by about 3.15pm and that he would start shaking and having stomach cramps.
He said he told Heard he needed his medication, but that she said ‘no, four o’clock’.
Depp continued: ‘My body clock was needing medication to stop the onslaught… I was not in good shape.
‘For someone this low… it is the lowest point I believe I have ever been in my life… on the floor, sobbing like a child and had still not received the medicine.’
Amber Heard, 34, was seen leaving Oswald’s private members club in the early hours of this morning
Depp: ‘Shall we each swallow an E at around 8pm and go to dinner (at a) wonderful Peruvian spot?’
Depp was asked if he was taking MDMA around September 2014. The actor said: ‘I don’t recall it but it’s possible.’
Ms Wass then read out a message sent by Depp on October 4, 2014, which said: ‘I’m going to quite gracefully glide into a massage for my broken back and neck.
‘I shall exit in one hour a monster. Shall we each swallow an E at around 8pm and go to dinner (at a) wonderful Peruvian spot?’
Ms Wass said: ‘This is an email to somebody who has not been identified.’
She asked about the ‘Peruvian spot’ and whether it was ‘a reference to cocaine’. Depp said: ‘It’s a mystery to me. It might have been a Peruvian restaurant, it might have been a reference to cocaine.’
Ms Wass suggested to Depp that ‘you started lapsing again, didn’t you, in September 2014?’.
Depp replied: ‘I wasn’t taking the ‘Roxxies’ (Roxicodone) that I went to the island that I went to detox from… any other substances would come from (Depp’s private doctor, David) Kipper.’
The lawyer asked: ‘Dr Kipper wasn’t supplying you with ecstasy, was he?’ Depp said: ‘No.’
Ms Wass read from medical notes dated September 22, which recorded that Depp punched the wall during an argument with Heard and was found ‘sitting in the kitchen with scraped and bloodied knuckles’.
The barrister said: ‘It seems to be how you are expressing your anger yet again.’
Depp replied: ‘I would rather express my anger by hitting an inanimate object than… the person I love.’
Ms Wass said: ‘There are times when you don’t even remember the conduct that you were responsible for, you blacked out on many, many occasions.’
Depp said: ‘There were blackouts for sure, but in any blackout there are snippets of memory.’
Johnny Depp ‘romanticises the entire drug culture and has no responsibility for his behaviour’, says his doctor
Ms Wass read out medical notes written by Depp’s private doctor, David Kipper.
The notes said that Depp ‘romanticises the entire drug culture and has no accountability for his behaviour’.
The doctor also wrote that Depp paid ‘lip service’ to people like the actor’s friend Sir Elton John ‘more for their celebrity than their struggle with sobriety’.
Dr Kipper added: ‘There is also an issue of patience. He is driven almost reflexively by his id. He has no patience for not getting his needs met. He has no understanding of delayed gratification and is quite childlike in his reaction when he doesn’t get immediate satisfaction.’
Depp responded: ‘We had all just met, Dr Kipper and myself and Ms Heard and Nurse Lloyd, so they were not versed in our lives, our life together, as yet.’
Amber Heard’s movie with James Franco ‘sparked a binge that put Johnny Depp in the hospital’
Ms Wass continued that Dr Kipper ‘started treating Heard for anxiety and indeed referred Ms Heard to another medical person’, Dr Connell Cowan.
She said Dr Cowan wrote in medical notes: ‘JD is very threatened by career, particularly any kind of romantic scenes she has to do. Her movie with JF (James Franco) precipitated a binge that put JD in the hospital.
‘Everyone around J seems to be intimidated by his power and money. No one stands up to him.’
Ms Wass asked: ‘Can you think of any reason why Ms Heard would have said that to Dr Cowan unless it was true?’
Depp said: ‘I believe it had a benefit to her motivation.’
Ms Wass asked if it was part of ‘the hoax, the agenda, the insurance policy’.
The actor replied: ‘I think she was telling porky pies with her psychiatrist.’
Heard has arrived at the High Court with her squad after going out on the town with her sister Whitney until the early hours of this morning on the third day of Johnny Depp’s blockbuster libel trial in London
Who will be called to give evidence? Johnny Depp’s exes Winona Ryder and Vanessa Paradis will make statements at High Court
Vanessa Paradis is one of Depp’s former partners. She insists he was never abusive towards her
Vanessa Paradis
Vanessa Paradis is a French singer, actress and model who shot to fame aged just 14 with the song Joe Le Taxi.
She has been a spokesmodel for Chanel for many years and appeared in a number of films, alongside continuing her singing career.
Ms Paradis, 47, was in a relationship with Depp for around 14 years from around 1998. The couple’s daughter, Lily-Rose, is also now pursuing a career as an actress.
Ms Paradis is due to give evidence at the trial.
Winona Ryder is also due to give evidence at the High Court trial
Winona Ryder
Winona Ryder is also due to give evidence at the High Court trial as part of his case against News Group Newspapers (NGN).
Ms Ryder was in a relationship with Depp during the early 1990s, and the pair appeared together in Edward Scissorhands.
Depp famously tattooed Winona Forever on his arm. After the couple split, he reportedly changed it to Wino Forever.
Dan Wootton has been The Sun’s Executive Editor since March 2018
Dan Wootton
New Zealand-born Dan Wootton has been The Sun’s Executive Editor since March 2018. The article at the heart of Johnny Depp’s libel claim was written by Mr Wootton for his weekly column in the newspaper.
Mr Wootton also presents the weekday Drivetime show on talkRadio and has his own podcast – The Dan Wootton Interview.
A showbiz reporter for many years, before joining The Sun, Mr Wootton had stints at a number of newspapers and magazines, including the Daily Mail, where he also worked as a columnist, and the now defunct News Of The World, where he was Showbiz Editor.
He was also showbiz presenter for ITV’s Lorraine show for 10 years.
Depp ‘flew into another rage when Heard told him she was meeting English novelist Clive Barker at his home while he recovered from illness’
The court heard how Depp claimed his jealousy was ‘provoked’ when asked about allegedly kicking Heard for visiting Hellraiser novelist Clive Barker at his home while he recovered from an illness.
The Hollywood star allegedly flew into ‘another’ rage when his ex-wife told him she was meeting the English playwright while he recovered from an illness on December 17, 2014.
He yesterday denied that apologetic texts sent to Heard after the alleged incident in which he described himself as a ‘lunatic’ and a ‘f***ing savage’ related to domestic abuse.
Ms Wass asked: ‘In December 2014 Ms Heard had arranged to meet with the playwright and novelist Clive Barker.
‘She had arranged to meet him at his home because in fact he had been very seriously ill and you were very uncomfortable about her going to his time and your jealousy came to the fore as it did with James Franco. It made you angry and you lost your self control. Do you agree or not?’
Depp replied: ‘There were many instances. There was an episode involving her rendezvous with Mr Barker. There were many instances where jealousy did come from my side.
‘There were many instances where it was provoked if you will.’
In a text sent to Heard after the alleged attack read to the court, he said: ‘Slim I’m truly sorry I could not be more sorry for upsetting you to the degree I have.
‘I do of course take your generosity and devotion to heart and I reciprocate. Please know my apology is sincere and solid. I hope your meeting with Clive Barker is excellent. Love you very f**ing much, Steve.’
He later wrote: ‘I always regret it when I jump or when you jump therefore I put in heavy work with shrink. I’m sorry for being less your disappointment in me and my behaviour, I’m a f***ing savage.’
Ms Wass noted that Depp used the same language to describe himself in his texts as he had earlier used to refer to individuals who ‘kicked’ women.
The lawyer asked: ‘Yesterday I asked you how you would describe a man who kicks his wife in the back and you immediately came up with the word savage.
‘It’s a word I use,’ came the reply.
‘And you were describing yourself as savage in that text because you had been violent towards a woman,’ the lawyer said.
‘No ma’am, I often describe myself in derogatory ways and would be the first to be unkind to myself,’ Depp said.
‘Not only did I not kick, or punch Ms Heard at any time. Calling myself savage is certainly not to the effect that you suggest. So I disagree with your dissection of this text.’
Depp described himself as ‘sick’ while infamous footage of him presenting an awards ceremony while under the influence of drugs was played to the court.
He denied being drunk in the viral clip of him onstage hosting the Hollywood Film Awards in 2014.
Asked about his slurred speech and shambolic appearance, Depp said he had been withdrawing from a ‘very unpleasant medication.’
He said: ‘I was not drinking.
‘I don’t feel ashamed of that moment because that’s a sickly man, a drug addict who is coming off a very unpleasant medication and I was not prepared to go out and give that awards show however because they had asked me and it was my duty to do so I carried it through. It was a horrific mistake.
‘I was under the influence of many many medications.’