Johnny Depp denies he has 'nasty, angry side to his character' as libel case begins
Words by ITV News Correspondent Juliet Bremner
This libel case relates to two articles published by The Sun and the sun’s website which described Johnny Depp of being a “wife beater” and implied that he was guilty of serious and repeated domestic violence against his former wife Amber Heard.
The articles appeared under the headline “Going Potty: How can JK Rowling be genuinely happy casting wife beater Johnny Depp in new Fantastic Beasts film” and was written by Dan Wootton, executive editor at the newspaper.
The allegations are strenuously denied by Mr Depp but the Sun and Mr Wootton claim they are true.
The 57-year-old actor says that these are seriously defamatory allegations which accuse him of being guilty of serious violence against his former wife Amber Heard. Further to this, his violence towards her was so extreme that the actress and model feared for her life.
Lawyers say this amounts to a full scale attack on Johnny Depp and he denies the allegations in the strongest possible terms.
The Pirates of the Caribbean star entered the witnesses box in court 13 of the Royal Court of Justice and gave his full name as John Christopher Depp the Second. After some confusion about which court documents he should be looking at Mr Depp was asked about a recording from September 2015.
Mr Depp told the court that his recollection was that the audio recording had been made by him so that he could play it back to Ms Heard because “she would say something very different to what she’d before and so I thought the best thing to do was to record the conversation”.
In the recording the couple argued about an incident during which Mr Depp alleges that she had hit him, he says “you punched me in the f****** face”. According to the court documents of the conversation Amber Heard denies this saying “I slapped you, I didn’t punch you….I didn’t deck you, I hit you.” She is recorded calling Depp “a baby” and telling him to grow up.
He told the court: “I wanted to avoid another confrontation. whenever it would escalate I would try and go to my own corner as it were. I thought it was important we should separate before it got out of hand.”
Recalling another occasion in his hotel room in San Francisco after Ms Heard had obtained a restraining order against him. He said that they had an “emotional conversation” and she had at some stage asked him to hug her but he refused.
“I didn’t think it was right in the circumstances. She had said she was in fear of her life from me and had said I had been this monster, which was not the case, I did not understand why she would want to touch me,” he told the court.
Johnny Depp denied that he had “a nasty, angry side to his character”. Answering questions from Sasha Wass QC who is representing the Sun newspaper he replied that he did not even recognise his own name sometimes and believed he had become a product.
This was his reply “I am aware there has been a lot of pain from the way i was raised. When you are trying to figure out what it is all about when success and notoriety have come to you and you don’t understand why they have come to you and you don’t feel worthy it is a very confusing thing. You have become a product. The sound of my own name, even when I speak my own name it sounds foreign to me.”
He denied that he had “an anger problem” saying that he got angry “but that does not mean that I have an anger problem”.
When reminded about an incident at a hotel in New York in 2003 when he was arrested for causing nearly $10,000 dollars of damage. He accepted that he had been angry but disputed that he had “trashed the room”. He told the court that it had “been a bad day and evening” and claimed “when I left the room it was not unliveable”.
Sasha Wass said to him “I am suggesting as clearly as I can that you are the type of person who when they become angry expresses that thorough violence, do you understand that?” and Mr Depp said simply: “Yes, I understand.”
Earlier, she had asked him if he found drugs glamorous and whether he used them regularly. He admitted he had taken various drugs including cocaine, cannabis and alcohol. He also accepted that many of his friends and heroes were habitual drug users, including Hunter S Thomspon, Keith Richards, and Marilyn Manson.
He also accepted that some of the people who work for him would provide him with illegal drugs if he asked them to do so.
Actor Ellen Barkin who had a brief relationship with Mr Depp after they filmed Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in 1998 told an interviewer that he regularly took illegal drugs. She was asked if he took hallucinogenic, cocaine, marijuana and she replied “all the time.”
Mr Depp replied in court: “No, I did not.” He said the couple had parted on bad terms and he would not regularly take drugs when he was filming or working.
He also denied a claim from Ms Barkin that “it was just a world of violence”, full of yelling at his assistants. Mr Depp said: “I can swear that is the furthest description from me and how I communicate with people who I work with. Never would I speak down to someone or think of someone as less than me.”
Johnny Depp was repeatedly pushed on the issue of assaults and disturbances over almost 30 years. He repeatedly insisted that he did not seek confrontation snd didn’t have an anger management problem.
However the court was shown footage taken on Amber Heard’s mobile phone which showed him slamming kitchen cupboards so violently that the glass in the front shattered. He then pours himself a large glass of red wine, emptying the bottle. When he realises she is filming him he shouts at her and the screen goes black.
The barrister cross examining him on behalf of the Sun newspaper asked if he was drunk, he replied “I’m not sure i would say i was inebriated I would say I was upset.” He was asked if this behaviour was likely to seem intimidating to Amber Heard and he agreed it could be. Depp also said he thought it was unlikely he would have taken cocaine on that occasion. “I am relatively sure i wasn’t taking cocaine because of the time when the video was taken. … it looks around the time when I had made a film called the Lone Range in 2013.”
It was around this time the court heard that Ms Heard alleges she first saw what she describes as “the monster”, when Mr Depp lost control and “became a violent thug.” He disputed this and claimed that the monster was him answering back when Ms Heard yelled at him during exchanges that frequently became screaming matches.
“I would say it is a very unpleasant video to watch and i wasn’t particularly happy with myself at the time.” He was asked but is that was an example of the monster, “No I do not believe that was the monster,” he replied.