Amber Heard testified Monday that the multi-million dollar defamation lawsuit brought against her by her ex-husband Johnny Depp is “torture” and she just wants him to leave her alone to move on.
The 36-year-old actress also said she divorced Johnny Depp in May 2016 because violence had become “normal” for him and made him fear for his life.
“I had to quit,” he said. “She knew that if she didn’t do it, she wouldn’t survive. She was so scared that she thought it was going to end very badly for me,” the actress said.
Heard claimed that Depp could become physically and sexually an abusive “monster” when he was drinking and his efforts to cut back on drug and alcohol use failed.
“The monster had been that thing that was now normal and not the exception. Violence was normal now,” he explained to the seven-person jury who heard testimony in a court in Fairfax, Virginia.
The 58-year-old actor, who gave his testimony in late April, denies hitting Heard and claims she was the violent one.
The star of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise accuses his ex-wife of ruining his reputation and career by claiming in a 2018 Washington Post article that she, without mentioning Depp, described himself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse”.
The actor claims 50 million dollars in reparation. She fired back by asking for double that by accusing him of “rampant physical violence and abuse.”
The actress says that the trial has forced her to relive “over and over again the most intimate, painful and deeply humiliating issues and personal things that she survived”.
“I want to move on and I want Johnny to move on,” Heard said. “I just want him to leave me alone.”
Filing for divorce was “the hardest thing he ever had to do,” the “Aquaman” star added, insisting “it was so hard because I loved Johnny so much.”
Heard said that the same week she filed for divorce, she also sought a restraining order because her ex-husband threw a cell phone in her face after their last violent argument in May 2016.
They also evoked several violent episodes before the court in Fairfax, Virginia, including a crisis of jealousy during a stay in France. According to Heard, Depp couldn’t stand that he had shot a sex scene in a movie and didn’t believe him when he told him a stunt double had been used for the scene.
bumps under makeup
Under cross-examination, Depp’s lawyers asked Heard to discuss the multiple incidents of alleged domestic violence, to which the actress showed photos from the days afterward in which the injuries were visible.
“You should see what she looks like under the makeup,” Heard said.
She was also questioned at length about her pledge to donate $7 million from Depp’s divorce settlement to charity.
Heard acknowledged that she had not donated the full amount yet, but said this was because she needed the money to fight her ex-husband’s defamation lawsuit.
“I haven’t been able to honor those commitments even because I was sued,” she said.
The judge in the case, Penney Azcarate, scheduled closing arguments for May 27, after which it will be left to the jury.
According to financial experts presented by Depp’s lawyers, the newspaper article would have caused him to lose some 22.5 million dollars of expected income for the sixth “Pirates of the Caribbean” film, from which he was removed.
The actor sued his ex-wife in the United States two years after losing a libel case in London, when he attacked the British tabloid The Sun for calling him a “violent husband.”
Depp and Heard began dating in 2011, before marrying in February 2015. Their divorce was finalized in early 2017.
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