Johnny Depp on stand: Ex-wife Heard’s allegations ‘heinous’

By Associated Press

FAIRFAX:  Actor Johnny Depp informed jurors Tuesday that he felt compelled to sue his ex-wife Amber Heard for libel out of an obsession for the reality after she accused him of home violence.

“My goal is the truth because it killed me that all these people I had met over the years … that these people would think that I was a fraud,” he stated.

Depp flatly denied ever hitting Heard, calling the bodily and sexual assault allegations towards him disturbing, heinous and “not based in any species of truth.” “Nothing of the kind ever happened,” Depp stated in court docket.

Alluding to the autumn his profession has taken since Heard levied abuse allegations towards him, the previous “Pirates of the Caribbean” star stated, “it’s been six years of trying times. It’s very strange when one day you’re Cinderella, so to speak, and then in 0.6 seconds you’re Quasimodo.”

For the primary hour-plus of testimony Tuesday, Depp gave lengthy, stream-of-consciousness solutions to questions on his childhood and his early film profession, talking in his signature deep baritone. After one lengthy reply, he admitted: “I forgot what the original question was.”

Indeed, he acknowledged his meandering model, notably because it pertains to his writing model. He talked about his lengthy friendship and collaborations with the late gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, and stated he sought to emulate a method that usually included brash language and adorning ideas.

He stated that led him at instances to jot down textual content messages that he now finds embarrassing, and he apologized to the jury for the vulgar language he utilized in textual content messages launched as proof to explain Heard.

“In the heat of the moment, in the heat of the pain I was feeling, I went to dark places,” he stated. But he stated he’d been ready for six years to inform his aspect of the story after Heard filed for divorce towards him in 2016 and sought a restraining order towards him.

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The trial started greater than per week in the past, however, previous to Tuesday, jurors had solely seen the Hollywood star sitting silently together with his workforce of attorneys as both sides has tried to embarrass the opposite in a trial that Heard’s attorneys precisely predicted would flip right into a mudslinging cleaning soap opera.

After denying Heard’s abuse allegations, Depp spoke at size a couple of childhood by which bodily abuse from his mom was “constant.” When he turned a father, Depp stated, he made positive his youngsters didn’t expertise that type of upbringing.

Depp will proceed his testimony Wednesday. In Tuesday’s session, he testified primarily concerning the early years of his relationship with Heard, saying she appeared “too good to be true” at first.

“She was attentive,” Depp stated of the girl he married in 2015. “She was loving. She was smart. She was kind. She was funny. She was understanding … We had many things in common, certain blues music … literature.”

He stated there have been little issues, although, that gave him indications of a rocky relationship forward. She turned upset, he stated, when he broke a longtime routine by which she took off his boots for him when he got here dwelling. And he stated she was indignant when he would not go to mattress when she was prepared.

“I didn’t understand why, as a 50-some-year-old man, I couldn’t go to sleep when I wanted to,” he stated.

Depp, 58, stated he was cognizant of the age distinction between him and Heard, 35. “I acknowledge the fact I was the old, craggy fogey and she was this beautiful, creature,” he stated. But Depp stated that inside a 12 months and a half, it was as if Heard had change into one other individual.

Actress Amber Heard within the courtroom throughout a listening to on the Fairfax County Circuit Court in Fairfax. (Photo | AP)

So far, Depp’s associates, household, and workers have testified that Heard was the aggressor within the relationship, bodily attacking him on a number of events. Heard’s former private assistant testified that Heard spit within the face in a match of rage.

Heard’s attorneys have stated Depp bodily and sexually assaulted her on a number of events, typically in conditions the place he drank a lot he later blacked out. Depp stated Heard’s allegations of his substance abuse have been “grossly embellished” and that there have been no moments the place he’s been uncontrolled.

“I’m not some maniac who needs to be high or loaded all the time,” Depp stated, although he admitted to doing “a line or two” of cocaine with Heard’s sister, Whitney.

The actor stated he was hooked on ache remedy, which stemmed from an harm on the set of the fourth “Pirates of the Caribbean” film. He additionally stated he took his mom’s “nerve pills” when he was a child. But Depp stated he detoxed from the ache remedy and has skilled lengthy durations of sobriety through the years.

“The characterization of my ‘substance abuse’ that’s been delivered by Ms. Heard is grossly embellished,” Depp stated. “And I’m sorry to say, however numerous it’s simply plainly false. I believe that it was a straightforward goal for her to hit.”

The lawsuit itself is meant to be over whether or not Heard libeled Depp when she wrote a 2018 op-ed piece in The Washington Post about home violence. In the article, Heard referred to herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.”

She by no means talked about Depp by title, however Depp and his attorneys stated it was a transparent reference to accusations Heard made in 2016 when the couple divorced and he or she sought a restraining order towards him.

Heard’s attorneys, who’ve filed their very own countersuit towards Depp, stated nothing within the article libels him. They say the abuse allegations are true, and that the harm to Depp’s repute — which he says bought him booted from the profitable “Pirates of the Caribbean” film franchise — got here from his personal dangerous habits.