Actor Ellen Barkin has claimed that “jealous” Johnny Depp once threw a wine bottle across a hotel room back when they were dating in the early 1990s.
Ms Barkin said she first became friends with Mr Depp in 1994 when they starred in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas together before their relationship turned “sexual” and they would meet up a few times a week.
Her testimony, which was recorded back in 2019, was played in court in Fairfax, Virginia, on Thursday during Mr Depp’s high-profile defamation trial with ex-wife Amber Heard.
Ms Barkin testified that she was in a hotel room in Las Vegas with Mr Depp, his assistant and his friends one day during filming for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
She said that there was “a fight going on” and the actor picked up a wine bottle and threw it across the room.
The fight was not with her, she said, but between Mr Depp and “his friends in the room, the assistant, honestly I don’t remember”.
The bottle did not hit her or anyone else in the room, she testified, but it was thrown in the direction of her and the group of people in the room.
“I don’t know why he threw the bottle,” she said.
Ms Barkin’s testimony about the incident was heard previously during Mr Depp’s UK libel case with The Sun over an article where the newspaper labelled him “a wife beater” – which the Pirates actor lost.
Back then, Mr Depp denied the incident took place.
Jurors on Thursday heard Ms Barkin also testify that her ex was “jealous” and “controlling” during their brief time together, and would question her about where she was going and what she was doing, telling her “don’t do this, don’t do that”.
“Just a jealous man, controlling,” she described Mr Depp.
“Where are you going? Who are you going with? What did you do last night?” she recalled he would ask.
Ms Barkin testified about one particular time where Mr Depp allegedly got “very angry” and accused of her having sex with someone else because she had a slight scratch on her back.
“He got very angry as he insisted that it came from someone I must have had sex with that wasn’t him,” she testified.
She said that Mr Depp was “drunk a lot of the time” and was also using hallucinogenics, cocaine and marijuana.
“I was always aware” about him drinking to excess, she said, adding that he was a “red wine drinker” and “called me and told me he was tripping”.
She said that it was Mr Depp who broke the relationship off after several months together.
Ms Heard and Mr Depp have both accused each other of throwing bottles during violent fights.
Ms Heard and Mr Depp’s former best friend Bruce Witkin have also testified that Mr Depp has a “jealous streak”.
Mr Depp is suing his ex-wife for defamation over a 2018 op-ed she penned for The Washington Post where she described herself as a “a public figure representing domestic abuse”.
The Pirates of the Caribbean actor is not named in the article, which is titled “I spoke up against sexual violence – and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change”.
However Mr Depp claims that it falsely implies that he is a domestic abuser – something that he strongly denies – and that it has left him struggling to land roles in Hollywood. He is suing for $50m.
Ms Heard is countersuing for $100m, accusing Mr Depp of orchestrating a “smear campaign” against her and describing his lawsuit as a continuation of “abuse and harassment”.
