Amber Heard ‘caked in makeup’ to hide injuries for James Corden TV show after Depp attack, court told

Amber Heard appeared on a chat show in heavy make-up to conceal black eyes after Johnny Depp headbutted her the night before.

Amber Heard with injuries she says were sustained by a headbutt from Johnny Depp, left, and hours later appearing on James Corden, right. Pictures: Supplied/CBS/YouTube

Amber Heard appeared on James Corden’s The Late Late Show “caked” in make-up to conceal two black eyes caused when Johnny Depp headbutted her, she told the High Court in London yesterday.

The actress described enduring “one of the worst and most violent nights of our relationship” on the eve of her appearance on the chat show.

Depp, 57, is suing Dan Wootton, executive editor of The Sun, and the publisher of the newspaper over an article in 2018 that called him a “wife beater”.

Heard, 34, told the court that “Johnny got mad at me” at their penthouse in Los Angeles in December 2015. She claimed the Pirates of the Caribbean actor headbutted her, dragged her by the hair, pulling out clumps, and repeatedly punched her in the head.

“I had bruised ribs, bruises all over my body, bruises on my forearms from trying to defend the blows. I had two black eyes, I had a broken nose, I had a broken lip … the really bad ones [bruises] were in my hairline, on my scalp,” she said.

“There was chunks of hair missing, there was pus in those wounds in my hairline, dark red bruises … purple-red on my temples and on my chin. The inside of my upper lip was cut.”

Heard said that no injuries were visible in a video of her appearance on Corden’s show shown to the court because they were hidden with make-up.

Heard said there was ‘pus in my hairline’ after the alleged attack. Picture: Supplied

Heard said she had two black eyes and broken ribs were among her injuries. Picture: Supplied

Eleanor Laws, QC, for Depp, asked Heard: “That’s what you looked like on the show. There is no sign of you having any injuries.”

She replied: “I have tons of injuries."’

Ms Laws said: “You don’t have a split lip.”

Pictures ‘not a set up’

Heard replied that she had “caked on red lipstick” and “caked on make-up”. The actress denied that a photograph taken by her friend, Raquel Pennington, of her with facial bruising after the alleged attack was “completely set up”.

Melanie Inglessis, a make-up artist who prepared Heard for The Late Late Show, said that she had received a text from the actress the night before, saying: “Johnny came over to talk and we had a fight and he beat on me.”

‘He tried to kill me’

Ms Inglessis said that she had gone to the couple’s penthouse and seen damage to their bed and writing on a worktop with a gold marker pen. The court has seen a photograph of the message, allegedly in Depp’s writing, reading: “Why be a fraud. All is such bullshit.”

Heard told her that Depp had tried to suffocate her and “he tried to kill me”, Ms Inglessis said. She returned the next day to prepare Heard for The Late Late Show and said she saw that the actress had “minimal discolouration” in the corner of each eye by the nose, the bridge of her nose was cut and swollen and there was a cut to the right of her lip.

Amber Heard on the James Corden show, with bright red lipstick. Picture CBS/YouTube

Ms Inglessis told the court that the concealer was “very effective” in covering the bruises because “they were not that dark or inflamed yet”. She added: “We had no other choice but to do bright red lipstick to cover the injury on her lip.”

We accidentally clashed foreheads: Depp

Samantha McMillen, Depp’s stylist who helped Heard to prepare for the show, previously told the court that she had seen “no visible” injuries. Heard said that she already had make-up on by the time she saw Ms McMillen. Depp has previously said that he and Heard had clashed foreheads during an argument but insisted that this had been an accident while he tried to restrain her.

Heard told the court that Depp “clenched his fists, wheeled back and slammed his head directly into mine, into my nose”.

Australian attack: Bottles thrown ‘like grenades’

She said that nine months earlier he had thrown glass bottles at her “like grenades” and stripped her naked during a “three-day hostage situation” in Australia, where he was filming the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean film. “He was screaming at me, over and over again, ‘You ruined my life, I hate you, I’m going to f***ing kill you’ … I really thought I might die,” she told the court.

She said Depp had lobbed “all the bottles in reach” towards her during the explosive 2015 row on the Australian trip.

The court has previously heard that Depp’s finger was severed during the alleged incident. The Hollywood star blamed his ex-wife for the injury, which she denied.

“I don’t think he meant to sever the finger but yes he did continue the attack,” she told the court.

Heard said she escaped and locked herself in her bathroom. When she went downstairs the next day she said Depp held up a finger with a missing tip and said “look what you made me do”.

The Aquaman actress also claimed that she was attacked after a thanksgiving party attended by the singer Marilyn Manson at the LA penthouse in November 2015. She said she was left with a lump on the back of her head and “a busted lip”.

US actor Johnny Depp arrives to attend his libel trial against News Group Newspapers (NGN), at the High Court in London, on July 22. Picture: Nicklas Hallen/AFP

Heard also said that Depp slapped her, grabbed her hair and knelt on her back in Tokyo two days before attending the premiere of his film Mortdecai in January 2015. She said she feared that the backless dress she wore on the red carpet would reveal the bruising.

Heard, who married the actor in February 2015 and sought a restraining order in May the following year, was questioned in private for 25 minutes about “allegations of sexual violence”.

Pistol and Boo

She had earlier admitted taking her two miniature Yorkshire terriers, Boo and Pistol, into Australia on a private jet having filled out customs cards saying that she had no animals. She pleaded guilty in Australia in April 2016 to making a false customs declaration on the basis that she had been told the dogs could be taken into the country. She told the High Court: “We both filled out the same thing, yet I took the charges because if Johnny got charges it would have further compromised Pirates, which was already compromised [by the finger-cutting incident]”.

She said that Depp’s lawyers had told her: “If I took the charges because I’m significantly less well known … that I would somehow make it so that his job was less threatened than it already was. I took the charges and I accepted that I filled out the form incorrectly and that it represented a falsehood.”

Kevin Murphy, Depp’s former estate manager, told the court last week that he had repeatedly warned Heard that she could not take the dogs because they did not have the right paperwork. He said that she ordered him to write a false statement for the authorities.

The Sun relies on 14 alleged incidents of domestic violence, all of which are denied by Depp. The case continues.

The Times