Amber Heard has described the libel proceedings pitting her word against Johnny Depp’s as “awful and embarrassing” as she insisted her ex-husband’s “perception of his place in our dynamic… could be so skewed”.
The Aquaman actress, 34, made the claim in her second day of giving evidence in her ex-husband’s libel action against The Sun over a 2018 article which labelled him a “wife beater”.
Eleanor Laws QC, representing Depp, said that in a recording of a conversation between the two actors Depp was saying that “you had been violent to him and you didn’t deny it, did you?”
Heard replied: “That’s not what we were speaking about. I wasn’t in a place to deny or agree with him, that’s not the point of the conversation… I was trying to point out to him the reality of this situation.”
She added: “I was trying to point out to him how bad, how violent, how nasty this whole thing has been and how, despite the fact that Johnny surrounded himself… with people who never could or would hold him accountable to his actions…”
Heard continued: “His perception of his place in our dynamic… could be so skewed…”
She said it was “absurd” that Depp was suggesting he had been the victim, saying: “Johnny was twice my size and he beat me up for five years and it seemed preposterous to me… [that] his claims of victimhood would work.”
Heard claimed she was “trying to save him the embarrassment”.
She also said: “In essence, I was asking him to please stop calling me a liar because it would force me into the position to prove it and here we are, four years later, and I just didn’t want to do this to him, I didn’t want to do this to us.
“This is awful and embarrassing and he was calling me… he had a vast PR team that’s still at work to this day… I just wanted him to stop doing that in the press because it would force me into the position that I would have to prove it.”
Birthday party ‘punch’
Laws asked Heard about an incident on 21 April 2016 when the actress was having her 30th birthday party at the couple’s Los Angeles penthouse.
Laws said Depp had received some “pretty monumental news” about his former business managers, to which Heard said: “I didn’t know about that at the time.”
Laws said after the party, Depp was reading and put it to Heard that she “became really angry”.
Heard said: “No ma’am, he wasn’t reading and I was upset because he had missed my birthday.”
Laws said: “You punched him in the face?”
Heard replied: “Absolutely not, he has no evidence to speak towards that. No, absolutely not.”
Heard claimed Depp left the apartment in the early hours of the morning, after hitting her.
She said: “Johnny didn’t drive, he needed to be driven, and so he asked [one of his security team] to drive him away and that was normal for Johnny after he would lose his temper and beat up on me.”
Heard was asked about meeting with her friend Raquel Pennington the morning after her birthday party and it was put to her that there was “excitement” because she was going with a group of friends to Coachella festival.
The actress appeared emotional as she said: “Of course not, I could not have been excited, my husband had beaten me up on my 30th birthday.”
She added: “No, I was heartbroken.”
Laws then asked: “And you left on the bed some human excrement, didn’t you?”
Heard appeared teary-eyed as she said: “Of course not, that is absolutely disgusting.”
Laws asked if any of Heard’s friends left the excrement in the bed, to which the actress replied: “Of course not, that is unimaginable to me.”
Laws then referred to a tape played in court on Monday in which Heard “admitted to hitting Mr Depp, but said that you weren’t or had not been punching him and you also admitted to starting an argument”.
Heard: ‘I only acted in self-defence’
The barrister played another recording of a conversation between Heard and Depp, in which Depp can be heard to say: “I was trying to close the (bathroom) door, I guess it scraped your toes.”
He also says to Heard that the door “hit me in the f****** head”.
Heard then says: “I did not kick a door or push a door so that it would hit you… it was not my intention.”
When Depp asked: “You didn’t mean to hit me in the head with the door but you meant to punch me in the jaw?”, Heard replies: “I meant to hit you… I do remember, I did mean to hit you.”
Laws said: “You’ve actually admitted violence there and you are not saying it in self-defence.”
Heard said she “tried to apologise, I tried to assert to him over and over again that I’m not intending to hurt him”, adding: “Better than to fight with him about the details of the fight and what he perceived as injuries and grievances … my job was to just try to say sorry, let’s move on to the bigger point.”
She added: “It would have made him more mad, more enraged and he would have got even more violent with me.”
Laws said: “You don’t ever in any legal proceedings want to accept or admit that you have ever used violence on Mr Depp, even in the face of your own confession… you don’t want to admit the truth, which is that you are violent, do you?”
Heard replied: “I only acted in self-defence, I wasn’t violent.”
Heard has accused Depp of verbal and physical abuse throughout their relationship, including screaming, swearing, punching, slapping, kicking, headbutting and choking her, as well as “extremely controlling and intimidating behaviour”.
Depp, however, says he was “not violent towards Ms Heard – it was she who was violent to him”, and claims his ex-wife was “building a dossier” of false allegations as an “insurance policy for later”.
The actor is suing News Group Newspapers and The Sun’s executive editor Dan Wootton over the publication of an article on 27 April 2018 with the headline: “Gone Potty: How can JK Rowling be ‘genuinely happy’ casting wife beater Johnny Depp in the new Fantastic Beasts film?”
Picture: Victoria Jones/PA Wire
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