Johnny Depp denied the abuse allegations against him as he took the stand Tuesday in his $50 million defamation case against ex-wife Amber Heard, and described being physically and emotionally tormented by his mother as a child.
The actor said Heard’s accusations of domestic violence against him were “not based in any species of truth” as he testified in front of a seven-person jury at a Fairfax, Virginia, courtroom, where Heard was present.
“Never did I, myself, reach the point of striking Ms. Heard in any way, nor have I ever struck any woman in my life,” Depp, 58, said.
Depp’s testimony comes a little over a week after the trial began. Depp sued Heard in early 2019 over an op-ed published in the Washington Post in which she wrote she’d become “a public figure representing domestic abuse.”
Heard didn’t name Depp in that December 2018 essay, but had previously accused the Oscar-nominated actor of physically and verbally abusing her during their marriage, which he denied.
On Tuesday, Depp said his late mother, Betty Sue Palmer, was “quite violent” and “quite cruel,” saying the psychological and verbal abuse is what tore his family apart.
“In our house, we were never exposed to any type of safety or security,” Depp said. “The only thing that one could do, really, was to try to stay out of the line of fire. I started to be able to observe, and I could start to see when she was about to head into a situation where she was going to get riled up and somebody was going to get it. Generally, it was me.”
Depp’s team asserts Heard fabricated the abuse allegations to destroy his reputation, while Heard’s camp claims Depp damaged his own career.
The defamation case, which is expected to last for weeks, is being held in Virginia because the Washington Post has servers there.
Heard, 35, hasn’t testified during the defamation trial.
During Depp’s testimony Tuesday, he spoke openly about substance abuse, as well as his training regimen and stunt work on some of his films.
“I’m not some maniac that needs to be high or loaded all the time,” Depp said. “On film sets, there have been no moments where I would have been considered out of control.”
He later said that when he was still in a relationship with Heard, she and her friends teased him about the amount of wine and marijuana he could consume.
After being asked if he had ever been addicted to any substances, Depp cited the opiate Roxycodone.
The actor claimed he was prescribed Roxycodone pills after suffering an injury on the set of the 2011 film “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.”
He told Heard’s attorney he did not remember which year he filmed “Pirates 4″ but that he was addicted and detoxed before starting his relationship with Heard. He said he’d never done opiates again after detoxing.
He then explained to the jury how he met Heard while in preproduction for the film “The Rum Diary,” a movie based on a novel by Hunter S. Thompson.
“I thought, ‘she could definitely kill me’ and ‘that’s what Hunter wants,” he said.
When Heard had to shoot a nude scene for the film, he said he devised a plan where the nudity was implied.
“‘You don’t have to take your clothes off, you don’t have to take your top off. It’s cool.’ And she was appreciative,” he said.
However, he said an on-screen kiss they later shared felt like a real one and that was the beginning of their romantic relationship. He said they later kissed in his trailer after they had some wine.
He said this occurred while he was having relationship trouble with his then-partner Vanessa Paradis.
Depp said for the first year and a half of their relationship, “things were wonderful,” comparing their relationship to the one between Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, who also met on a film set and had a large age difference.
“Things started to change. Or things started to reveal themselves is a better way to put it.”
Depp and Heard were married from 2015 to 2017.
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