Johnny Depp 'locked himself in bathroom' during Amber Heard violence and 'parade of insults'

Amber Heard claims a very different recollection of events as Johnny Depp tells the court he was abused during their relationship, as US Correspondent Emma Murphy reports

Johnny Depp would sometimes lock himself in the bathroom to escape ex-wife Amber Heard's violent attacks, a court heard on Wednesday.

Back on the stand in his libel case against Ms Heard, he claims she subjected him to a “parade of insults.”

She had a “need for conflict, a need for violence” that “erupts out of nowhere,” Mr Depp told jurors in Fairfax County Circuit Court during his second day of testimony.

“And the only thing I learned to do with it is exactly what I did as a child: retreat,” he said.

Ms Heard has accused Mr Depp of physically and sexually assaulting her on multiple occasions – something he has not yet addressed in detail, beyond dismissing the allegations on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, Mr Depp said things began to change in his marriage when he felt that he “was suddenly just wrong about everything” in Ms Heard’s eyes.

He said Ms Heard made little digs at him to demean him, with the insults escalating into full-fledged circular arguments from which there was “no way in or out.”

“It was sort of a rapid fire, sort of endless parade of insults,” he said. “Ms Heard was unable to be wrong. It just didn’t happen. She couldn’t be wrong.”

He said he was constantly being told about how wrong he was about various aspects of his life, including his 30-year acting career.

“I was sort of not allowed to be right,” he said. “Not allowed to have a voice.”

He said violence would often ensue, sometimes with a slap or a shove from Ms Heard or her throwing a television remote control or a glass of wine in his face.

“There were times when I would just go and lock myself in the bathroom or a place where she couldn’t get to,” he said.

“Why did I stay? I stayed I suppose because my father stayed (with my mother)… I didn’t want to fail,” he said.

“I wanted to try to make it work. I thought maybe I could help her. I thought maybe I could bring her around.”

Later, he addressed an alleged assault on a private plane flight in 2014 from Boston to Los Angeles when he was filming the movie "Black Mass." Ms Heard has said Depp became blackout intoxicated and assaulted her.

Mr Depp testified he took two roxycodone pills - an opiate to which he admits he was addicted at the time - and locked himself in the plane bathroom and fell asleep to avoid her badgering.

He added that he thinks he "ended up locking [himself] in about at least nine bedrooms, bathrooms."

He also detailed his version of events during an argument in 2015, when Ms Heard threw a bottle of vodka at him, he says, which severed his finger.

"Honestly I didn't feel the pain at first at all. I felt no pain whatsoever. What I felt was I felt heat. I felt heat and I felt as if something were dripping down my hand," he told the court.

"And then I looked down and realised that the the the tip of my finger had been severed."

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Mr Depp sued Ms Heard after she wrote a 2018 first-person piece in The Washington Post, in which she referred to herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.”

She never mentioned Mr Depp by name, but he and his lawyers said it was a clear reference to accusations Ms Heard made in 2016 when the couple divorced and she sought a restraining order.

Mr Depp said the accusations and the article contributed to an unfairly ruined reputation that made him a Hollywood pariah and cost him his role in the Pirates of the Caribbean movie franchise.

Ms Heard's lawyers say the article is accurate and does not defame him. They say Depp's ruined reputation is the result of his own bad behaviour, including drug and alcohol abuse.

On Tuesday, Mr Depp called the accusations of drug addiction “grossly embellished,” though he acknowledged trying every drug known to man and that he started abusing medication at age 11, when he snuck his mother's “nerve pills.”

Mr Depp denies any abuse.

The trial continues.