Amber Heard took the stand on Wednesday during the trial in her defense against a $50 million defamation claim brought by her ex-husband, Johnny Depp.
“I struggle to find the words to describe how painful this is. This is horrible for me to sit here for weeks and relive everything,” Heard said during the start of her testimony at Fairfax County Circuit Court in Virginia while detailing her early days of their romance and allegations of physical and s**ual abuse.
Speaking of the early days of her romance, Amber Heard said she and Depp began falling in love after filming “The Rum Diary.” “When I was around Johnny, I felt like the most beautiful person in the world. He made me feel like a million dollars,” Heard testified. “It just felt very intense.”
The two began seeing each other romantically in 2011. Heard was asked by attorney Elaine Bredehoft if she remembered the first time Depp hit her. “I will never forget it. It changed my life,” Heard said. Heard believed Depp was doing cocaine. She said that there was a vintage jar of cocaine nearby and that they were sitting together on a couch when she asked him about a tattoo on his arm and that he told her it said, “Wino.”
“I just laughed because I thought he was joking. And he slapped me across the face,” Heard said. “And I laughed. I laughed because I didn’t know what else to do. I thought this must be a joke. I didn’t know what was going on. I just stared at him.”
Heard testified that Depp hit her twice more and said she tried to will herself to walk out.
“I knew it was wrong and I knew that I had to leave him. And that’s what broke my heart. Because I didn’t want to leave him,” Heard said. “I wish I could sit here and say I stood up and walked out of that house and I drew a line and I stood up for myself.”
Johnny Depp then got down on his knees, cried and apologized saying, “I thought I put the monster away.” When she left shortly after the incident, she got texts from Depp apologizing profusely saying, “I’d rather cut my hand off than ever lay it upon you” and that he understood she could never forgive him.
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However, the violence only escalated, which Amber Heard blamed drinking for. Amber Heard testified that Johnny Depp would shove her, hit her, and push her.
Describing their relationship, Heard said, “He was the love of my life. But he was also this other thing. The other thing was awful.” Recalling another incident during the trial, Amber Heard testified in court that Johnny Depp threatened to “kill” her after she claimed he grew furious for “telling on him” to his kids that he had fallen off the wagon and started drinking again.
In July 9, 2013, during a vacation in the Bahamas, the then-couple were said to be enjoying one last ride on his yacht with the actor’s two kids — Lily-Rose and Jack — because Depp had sold the vessel to author J.K. Rowling.
Heard claimed Depp was “upset he had to sell the boat,” which led to Depp drinking copious amounts of alcohol by pouring it in coffee cups. She said that there was no “off button.” As he became visibly drunk, Depp’s then-14-year-old daughter became “panicky” and was upset by his behavior.
She then testified that the tipping point came when Depp half-playfully threw himself off the boat, sort of like a “dead fish” type of way, or a bad belly flop. “It looked a little scary,” Heard said. “Not something somebody would do if they were completely okay.”
She then claimed Lily-Rose started crying, and those emotions evolved into “almost like a panic attack” and Lily-Rose asked Heard lots of questions.
“I’m holding her and comforting her,” Heard recalled. “Johnny comes in and within a few seconds I realize that he shifted his attention on me and then he seemed very angry. He asked Lily-Rose to leave. Lily-Rose leaves, looks at me crying. And Johnny starts accusing me of kind of telling on him and calling him a drunk in front of his kids.”
Depp then turned violent. “He slams me up against the side wall — we were in the bedroom this whole time — up against the wall of the cabin and slams me up by my neck,” she recalled. “And holds me there for a second and tells me he could f***ing kill me and that I was an embarrassment.”
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