Amber Heard took the stand to describe her whirlwind romance with Johnny Depp’s before rampant drug use and alleged domestic abuse soured it.
Describing the first time Depp allegedly hit her, Heard said, ‘I will never forget it. It changed my life.’
‘I was sitting on the couch having a normal conversation. He was drinking. I think he was using cocaine because there was a jar – a jar – of cocaine on the table. There’s music playing, smoking cigarettes and I ask him about the tattoo he has on his arm.’
Depp had a tattoo on his arm that read ‘Wino Forever’ for his ex girlfriend Winona Ryder.
‘To me it looked like black marks, I didn’t know what it said,’ Heard said. ‘I said what does it say. He said it says Wino and I thought he was joking and I laughed. He slapped me across the face and I laughed. I laughed because I didn’t know what else to do. I thought this must be a joke. Because I didn’t know what was going on.’
Heard said she stared at Depp and laughed, thinking he was going to laugh and say it was all a joke.
‘You think it’s funny bi**h, you think you’re a funny bi**h?’ Depp said, according to Heard before slapping her again.
‘He slapped me again. It wasn’t a joke anymore. I stopped laughing. I didn’t know what else to do. He slapped me for no reason.’
‘Second slap I know he’s not kidding,’ Heard said. ‘It wasn’t a joke anymore. I stopped laughing. I didn’t know what else to do. He slapped me for no reason.’
She said Depp slapped her one more time, hard.
‘I lose my balance. I’m all of a sudden realizing the worst thing has happened to me that could possibly happen to you. I wish so much he was joking. It didn’t physically hurt me.’
Amber Heard took the stand Wednesday in Johnny Depp’s defamation case against her ex-husband Johnny Depp
Depp is suing Heard for $50million, claiming she defamed him and ruined his career after a 2018 Washington Post article in which she described herself as a domestic abuse survivor
Depp had a tattoo on his arm that read ‘Wino Forever’ for his ex girlfriend Winona Ryder. Heard said she laughed at it and he slapped her
‘I fell head over heels in love with this man,’ Heard testified under oath with her blonde locks curled and swept to the side
Heard described the moments immediately after she was slapped.
‘I was sitting there on the carpet, looking at this dirty carpet….I just sat there thinking how much time do I have….because god did he just me? No, I didn’t want to leave him, to have the man I was in love with leave. I knew it was wrong and I had to leave him and it broke my heard because I didn’t want to leave him.
‘I wish I could sit here and say I walked out of that house and drew a line and stood up for myself but looking at the dirty carpet trying to will myself to get up and walk out the door. I stood up and looked at him in the eye and looking at him and before I know it he starts crying. I’d never seen an adult man cry.’
She said Depp then began apologizing.
‘He’s touching my knees, saying I’m sorry baby, I thought I put the fu**er away, I thought I put the monster away. He’s on his knees.
‘I just remember thinking he was crying, he seemed so sorry but I couldn’t forgive him because it means it will happen again. I got up in my car and walked to my car and didn’t say anything’
‘I was heartbroken. I turned the key and drove home.’
Heard said that in 2012 he began accusing her of infidelity and physical violence became more regular.
‘He started accusing me, then the punching the walls next to my head – a constant at the time in 2012 when he was drinking. That became him accusing me of cheating. I’d defend myself, I’d say that’s crazy.
‘They would escalate to the point he’d push me or shove me down and I’d get back up, I’d look him in the eye and he’d ask if I wanted to go again.
‘He hit me in the face when I denied having an affair with my ex partner. He said he had proof. I turned to look at him and said you just hit me.’
Heard said she was walking on egg shells and recalled one instance where she was photographed too close to a man for Depp.
‘Destroying property and screaming at me – that was the worst. I felt I had to defend myself so he didn’t think these things were true.
She said nothing she did could calm Depp down.
‘I’d walk away and that would make it worse. He’d grab me by my hair or grab me by my arm. He’d smash things very close to me. Then he’d hit me.
‘It started with slapping then repetitive slaps, multiple times in a row.
‘Eventually I’d push him off of me or try to push his hands off me.’
‘We had this whirlwind romance in these beautiful places, falling in love, not able to show it because the world didn’t know about the split between he and his former partner. As a woman, that is troubling. He swore to me they hadn’t shared a bed for a year but were protecting the kids by not making it known to the press,’ Heard said
The couple met on the set of the 2011 movie The Rum Diary and Heard spoke of their budding romance.
‘I fell head over heels in love with this man,’ Heard testified under oath with her blonde locks curled and swept to the side.
‘I felt like this man knew me and saw me in a way no-one else had. I felt he understood me, where I came from. I felt when I was around Johnny I felt like the most beautiful person in the whole world. I felt like a million dollars.’
She told how the couple had to be under the radar and date in secret because he was splitting from ex Vanessa Paradis.
Depp and Heard met on the set of the 2011 movie The Rum Diary, turning up on the red carpet together for its London premiere
‘We had this whirlwind romance in these beautiful places, falling in love, not able to show it because the world didn’t know about the split between he and his former partner. As a woman, that is troubling. He swore to me they hadn’t shared a bed for a year but were protecting the kids by not making it known to the press.
‘We had to be really under the radar. Johnny pointed out the world would blame me and call me a homewrecker. We were secretly dating. It was beautiful.’
On the set of The Rum Diary the couple shared a kissing scene, where Heard said it went beyond acting.
‘We had a kissing scene and it felt real. He really kissed me using his tongue,’ she said. ‘We just had this, it was a friendship, flirtatious thing. I felt chemistry.
‘I felt this other thing that went beyond the pail of my job for sure. Johnny clearly felt that way about me but at the same time we were both in relationships and it’s a job and it was intimidating. I remember feeling intimidated and nervous about that. We went our separate ways and I didn’t hear from him for a long time.
The couple did not see each other after filming and reconnected years later. They began dating in October 2011.
‘There was no contact until Johnny called me on the phone one day, invited me to his home in Beverly Hills. It was out of the blue.’
She said Depp sent her several gifts.
‘He sent me a beautiful dress I wore in the movie with a beautiful handwritten note that said happy wrapping. He sent me a few gorgeous, expensive what I can only assume are collectible books. When I was away filming on a different job, he did send me some guitars.’
She said the chemistry that they had was ‘hard to explain’ and described it as ‘an electricity to the room.’
Heard said the relationship got deeper as they went on a press tour in 2011 for The Rum Diary.
‘Then we fell in love. We went on this press tour and it was a beautiful and strange time. We’re flying from one city to the next, Europe, New York, Los Angeles and we’re traveling around talking about this movie and we were falling in love.
‘In London he had me sat next to him at dinner and we ended up spending the night together in my hotel room. For the rest of the press tour it was on.’
‘That feeling, he’d lavish gifts and expressions of love, say how he never meet a woman like me.’
‘He took this foil off this bottle and put it on my ring finger – I’d been with him a few weeks – it felt very intense. We weren’t’ doing normal life stuff, we were hiding in these places around the world. He had so many homes, my home at the time. It was a bubble, in this little bubble of secrecy and it felt like this warm glow, music, books we loved, poetry we both loved by heart. It felt like a dream. It felt like absolute magic.’
She said the couple wre in a ‘bubble’ and he’s stay with her for days in a row, ‘painting me, reading poetry to me, just talking.’
‘Then he’d disappear and there would be no way to get in contact with him,’ she said. He disappeared at one point and then came back and said he was dealing with some health issue and would I join him in the Bahamas.’
‘That’s when I learned he had an island. I was in Spain, I rerouted my trip so I could land in Miami instead of LA so I could meet him on the island.
‘I noticed he was drinking Becks and tea. Lots of tea. Like lots of tea. I didn’t think anything of it, I thought the man really, really loves tea. We had this beautiful less than a week in the Bahamas.’
The couple met on the set of the 2011 movie The Rum Diary and she spoke of their budding romance. On the set of The Rum Diary the couple shared a kissing scene, where Heard said it went beyond acting. ‘We had a kissing scene and it felt real. He really kissed me using his tongue,’ she said. ‘We just had this, it was a friendship, flirtatious thing. I felt chemistry’
Heard began her testimony seated in front of Depp. ‘This is the most painful and difficult thing I’ve gone through. For sure,’ she said
Heard began her testimony seated in front of Depp.
‘I am here because my ex-husband is suing me for an op-ed I wrote,’ Heard said. ‘I struggle to find the words to describe how painful it is. This is horrible for me to sit here for weeks and relive everything, hear people that I knew some well, some not, my ex-husband with whom I shared a life speak, about our lives in the way that they have.
‘This is the most painful and difficult thing I’ve gone through. For sure.’
The actress described humble beginnings being raised in a working class household in Texas. She recalled working at a children’s museums, soup kitchens and working with deaf children, and said she ‘loved it.’
‘I did a small job in Texas where I played a part in a movie. An actor I was playing opposite had an agent visiting from LA. She said she’d heard about me from another bit part I did.
‘No job was too small for me. I put myself out there. She said I heard about you and I’d love to meet you in LA if you’re ever out in LA. I said when can I come,’ Heard said.
‘I used all but $180 to get out there, I landed, I didn’t know anyone, I was 17. I went to every audition, every casting, every meeting that I could. I didn’t have a car because those were expensive so I took the bus. Before smart phones I had a guide in my bag and a change of tank tops. I went to about 10 auditions a day and changed clothes in the back of the bus I was taking. I hustled from one audition to the other.’
‘I got a part in one thing and eventually my roles became bigger. It’s been slow progression since then. Tiny parts in bigger movies or larger roles in movies no-one would see and I guess it’s kind of like that.’
The A-list trial in Virginia, which started on April 11 and is set to last another three weeks, has so far seen Depp claim he was the victim of domestic abuse in his four days of testimony.
The Pirates of the Caribbean star is suing Heard for $50million, claiming she defamed him and ruined his career after a 2018 Washington Post article in which she described herself as a ‘public figure representing domestic abuse’, without naming her ex-husband.
Heard is countersuing for $100million, and after three weeks of sitting silently in the courtroom during Depp’s testimony, she is on the stand and ready to fight back today.
Depp sued his ex-wife Amber Heard for libel in Fairfax County Circuit Court after she wrote an op-ed piece in The Washington Post in 2018 referring to herself as a ‘public figure representing domestic abuse’
Earlier on Wednesday, the court heard from Dr. Dawn Hughes, a New York-based clinical and forensic psychologist who is an expert about domestic violence, and testified that Heard went from 130lbs to 105lbs in weight.
Heard was taking ‘significantly more medication’ and had more episodes of panic and more outbursts of anger, Dr. Hughes testifies, and called the mixture of Depp’s substance abuse and the violence a ‘very, very disastrous mix.’
She said there is a ‘lot of lying’ when someone is a substance abuser, a lot of ‘blame for your inability to stay clean and sober.’
Depp would have tried to rationalize his behavior and promised to get better, Dr. Hughes said, adding, ‘The majority of the sexually violent episodes were in these alcohol and drug fueled rages.
‘When alcohol and drugs came together was when Amber Heard was more in danger of being hurt by him.’
According to Dr. Hughes’ analysis, while Heard was verbally abusive and did hit Depp, it didn’t rise to the same level as him because she was ‘never able to shift the balance of power and control.’
The court heard that the claims by Depp’s lawyers that Heard’s abuse was a ‘hoax’ – the basis of her $100million lawsuit against him – would have made her trauma worse.
Dr. Hughes said that reading these reports would have made Heard’s PTSD more severe with more nightmares and more sleeplessness.
Dr. Hughes said: ‘The one thing women are afraid of is that no-ones going to believe them. When someone comes out and calls your experience a hoax that lends itself to more severe trauma for her.’
Heard’s first witness was Dr. Dawn Hughes, a New York-based clinical and forensic psychologist who is an expert about domestic violence
Depp’s lawyer Wayne Dennison cross examined Hughes Wednesday morning.
Dennison pressed Dr. Hughes on her use of the pronoun ‘she’ during her testimony the previous day.
Dr. Hughes said: ‘I was using she and her because my determination was Miss Heard was the victim of intimate partner violence.’
Dennison asked if Dr. Hughes even spoke to Depp during her evaluation and she said no.
Dennison said: ‘You can’t assess a relationship without talking to both parties?’
Dr. Hughes replied: ‘You can get a lot of information from one party, especially when it’s buttressed by therapy records and couple’s therapy.
‘I also read Mr. Depp’s transcripts, I reviewed his medical records, his texts message. I was not necessarily totally blind.’
Dennison asked: ‘So the standard now is not necessarily totally blind, I can assess it?’
Dr. Hughes said: ‘We assess relationships all the time. Certainly someone who has been trained in intimate partner violence looks for the dynamics.’
Under questioning Dr. Hughes said that she did not interview Dr. Laurel Anderson, the couple’s therapist who did a number of sessions with Depp and Heard.
Dr. Hughes said that Anderson’s notes, she said that Depp had been ‘well controlled’ for 20 or 30 years but ‘something in Miss Heard triggered him’.
Anderson did not conclude that Heard was the victim of spousal abuse but Dr. Hughes said that she disagreed with this.
Dennison said: ‘The stuff you disagree with you disregard and the rest you keep?
Dr. Hughes said: ‘That’s not correct.’
The court was shown the knife that Heard bought Depp as a present with the inscription ‘Hasta la muerte’, or ‘until death’ in Spanish.
Raising his voice, Dennison said: ‘A woman you suggest has characteristics of being afraid for her life gives her intimate partner a large knife on which she inscribes until death?’
Dr. Hughes protested that ‘there’s context’ to the gift.
The court was shown the knife that Heard bought Depp as a present with the inscription ‘Hasta la muerte’, or ‘until death’ in Spanish. Raising his voice, Dennison said: ‘A woman you suggest has characteristics of being afraid for her life gives her intimate partner a large knife on which she inscribes until death?’
Dr. Hughes testified that Heard initially described occasions where Depp forced her to have sex as ‘angry sex’.
Dennison asked Dr. Hughes if she helped Heard to ‘reframe’ these encounters as non consensual but she denied it, saying her job was to evaluate her.
The court was shown results from one of the tests that Dr. Hughes carried out on Heard as she was cross examined Wednesday.
Under the section ‘potential for aggression,’ it read: ‘Sometimes my temper explodes and I completely lose control.’
Dr. Hughes said that Heard responded that this was ‘sometimes true.’
She said: ‘Miss Heard reported to me in her relationship that would happen. Her anger and affect regulation would become impaired’.
Going over another response, Dr. Hughes confirmed that Heard said it was sometimes the case that ‘my temper explodes.’
Another response from Heard read: ‘I think I have three or four completely different personalities inside of me’.
Heard said this was ‘sometimes true’, Dr. Hughes said.
Dr Hughes said that Heard admitted to her she cut herself once as a teenager in a ‘reckless, stupid moment’ and never did it again.
These photos were previously shown in court from May 2016 of Amber Heard with an apparently bruised cheek
Depp detailed the explosive fight he and Amber Heard had in March 2015 in Australia where the top of his finger was severed when Heard allegedly threw a bottle of vodka at him
Depp is fighting an uphill battle to salvage his reputation after Britain’s High Court ruled against him last year when he sued The Sun newspaper for calling him a ‘wife beater’.
After weeks of testimony, a judge concluded that the outlet’s 2018 article was ‘substantially true’ and that the father-of-two had attacked Heard a dozen times, causing her to fear for her life on three occasions.
The London court also heard a trove of shocking texts Depp had sent to Avengers star Bettany, vowing: ‘Lets burn Amber.’
‘Let’s drown her before we burn her !!!,’ he wrote in November 2013. ‘I will f**k her burnt corpse afterwards to make sure she’s dead.’
Sources close to Depp say he never contemplated settling or dropping the case and is desperate for a second bite of the cherry in Virginia where the London result will be kept from jurors.
Armed with a battery of highly-paid lawyers he’s confident of tipping the balance with additional evidence that didn’t feature in the ‘wife beater’ case.
DailyMail.com has led the world in revealing much of the material over the past two years, from explosive audio recordings to bombshell depositions and police videos.
The cache includes bodycam footage from LAPD officers who visited the ex-couple’s LA apartment on the night of the blowout 2016 fight.
Heard claims that her ex-husband assaulted her before smashing up their $1.5 million home – but his lawyers will argue the videos don’t show any trace of damage.
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Read more at DailyMail.co.uk