NOTE: This article contains details and descriptions that are graphic and disturbing. Please read at your own discretion.
Amber Heard returned to the stand Thursday, testifying in the ongoing defamation trial brought by her ex-husband, Johnny Depp.
Heard’s testimony began with three photos she took of Depp in 2013 – after a year of dating.
In the first photo, Depp was asleep in a chair on his private island. Heard testified Depp had a “brief stint of sobriety” before he began using drugs again, when the photo was taken.
A second photo was of a sleeping Depp after what Heard called a “several-day bender.” She said the actor was not eating or sleeping much at the time.
The third image depicted Depp laying on his face on the floor of his hotel room.
Heard testified she asked Depp for a prenuptial agreement before they were married. She claimed he denied her request, telling her, “The only way out of this is death.”
Heard then chronicled the pair’s attendance at the Met Gala in 2014. Heard said Depp accused her of flirting with a woman at the event. She said once they returned home, Depp grabbed her by the neck and threw a bottle at her, which missed and broke a chandelier.
She claimed Depp held her down and “whacked” her in the face. She said she suspected she had a broken nose, as it was swollen, discoloured and red. (It is unclear if Heard’s nose was ever broken.)
When asked about filming the Adderall Diaries with actor James Franco, Heard said Depp “hated” Franco and accused her of previously “secretly having a thing” with the actor.
Heard said Depp had problems with a sex scene she and Franco performed in the film and that Depp called her a “slut” and asked several vulgar questions about the scene and her body.
Heard also testified about Depp’s detox from the opioid, Roxicodone. She claimed the actor’s moods were sporadic and intense, switching suddenly from elation to anger and violence. “It was hell,” she said.
Heard testified the couple would get into frequent arguments, and say “awful things” to each other.
“I’m so ashamed of the names we would call each other,” she said, adding that they both “got into that pattern.”
As Heard’s testimony continued, she answered in great detail questions about the now-infamous Australia trip where Depp lost the tip of his middle finger. Depp previously testified the digit severed when Heard threw a glass vodka bottle at his hand.
She said when she met up with Depp in Australia “he had lost a ton of weight,” and she knew then that “something was up.”
As they reunited (both had been working on seperate projects) Heard said Depp asked her to do MDMA with him, but said she adamantly refused.
When she attempted to leave, she said Depp shoved her and she “slid” across the floor. She said Depp then held her by her throat against the fridge before she slapped him across the face in retaliation and “stormed off.”
The next day, Depp remained paranoid she was having affairs with co-star Eddie Redmayne, as well as actor Billy Bob Thornton, and his suspicions led to a “belligerent” fight.
She said Depp pushed her up against a fridge before throwing her on to a games table and hitting her in the face. By this point, the pair had thrown and smashed bottles at each other.
“At some point he had a broken bottle up against my face, neck area by my jawline and he told me he’d carve up my face,” she said.
She continued, testifying through tears that Depp ripped off her nightgown, leaving her naked.
Heard, speaking through sobs and covering her face, told the jury Depp climbed on top of her and continued to punch her.
“I felt pain and there was a pressure on my pubic bone,” she said, explaining she then realized she was being forcefully penetrated with a glass bottle. “I just remember being really still and not wanting to move.”
“I didn’t know if the bottle he had inside me was broken,” she told the court through her sobs.
She also testified that as the alleged sex assault was taking place, Depp repeated the same phrase over and over again: “I’ll f–king kill you.”
When the alleged assault was over, she fled to the washroom, where she began to retch and lost control of her bladder.
When she emerged, “several hours” later she said Depp had covered the walls and surfaces with various messages in paint, including a “giant penis” on a painting on the wall.
The court was show photos from the trashed property which were taken in the following days – broken bottles, blood stains, holes in the drywall were among the aftermath presented to the jury.
“I thought maybe if I left him in Australia I thought something might happen to him…that he might die or kill himself. That seemed to be the trajectory he was on,” she told the court about her conflicted feelings about returning to the U.S. without her huband.
However, she said once they were both back in the U.S. they reached a reconciliation. Depp was facing surgery and Heard said she wanted to be there to make sure he was ok.
Things quickly spiralled out of control, however. Heard said not long after, there was another particularly violent fight, where her sister, Whitney, tried to get in the middle and break up the couple.
However, when Depp took a swing at Whitney, Heard said she threw a punch at Depp and that was “the first time I really landed one.”
That fight continued to escalated, and Heard said she decided to leave their home. As she was packing her things, she testified that Depp headbutted her in the face.
She said he then pinned her face-down onto their bed and began punching her in the back of the head, over and over.
“I don’t even remember feeling the pain…I just remember him saying ‘I f–cking hate you, I f–king hate you,’ over and over again,” she told the court through tears.
“I thought, ‘this is how I die.'”
When she awoke the next morning, Heard said Depp was gone and her best friend was there. The bed frame – a heavy, low piece of furniture – was broken. She said chunks of her hair was strewn around the house from the previous day’s fight, and there were blood stains all over the bed sheets.
Despite multiple bruises and lesions on her scalp, however, Heard said she decided to take a “gamble” and go on The Late Late Show with James Corden a few nights later. She said her makeup team worked gingerly to hide the bruises and she wore a thick, red lipstick to hide a cut on her lip.
Heard’s testimony ended after telling the court about her Christmas holiday that year with Depp and his two children. Depp promised to get sober, and so Heard decided to travel to his island in the Bahamas because, ultimately, she was “heartbroken” about the possibility of missing their first Christmas as husband and wife.
The first part of the trip went well, she said, but toward the end she suspected Depp had been using drugs and alcohol again.
The couple again became embroiled in a physical fight, she said, that ended when Depp trapped her in a bathroom and allegedly sexually assaulted her once again, this time with his fingers.
“‘You tough like a man now?’ he was saying to me, while jerking me around with his fingers inside me,” a visibly distressed Heard told the court.
Court was then adjourned for a week, until May 16.
In the legal battle between the two stars, both Heard, 36, and Depp, 58, claim to be victims of violence. The initial court case began when Depp filed a US$50-million defamation lawsuit over a Washington Post op-ed penned by Heard in late 2018 about domestic abuse.
Heard did not mention Depp by name in the article, but the actor alleges his reputation and career were still “devastated” as a result.
As she took the stand Wednesday, Heard told the jury this trial process has been “incredibly painful” and “the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”
On Tuesday, after Depp’s legal team finished questioning their witnesses, Heard’s lawyers asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that Depp had failed to make his case as a matter of law and that no reasonable jury could find in his favour.
Judge Penney Azcarate said the standard for dismissing a case at this point in the trial is exceedingly high, and that the case should be allowed to move forward if Depp has provided even a “scintilla” of evidence backing up his claims; she then dismissed the motion.
Heard is countersuing Depp for $100 million.
— with files from The Associated Press
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