I locked myself in bathroom to avoid wife’s fury, claims Johnny Depp

The actor tells of the moment Amber Heard allegedly severed the top of his finger after hurling a vodka bottle at him.

Johnny Depp displays the middle finger injured while he and his ex-wife Amber Heard were in Australia in 2015. Picture: AFP

Johnny Depp has told an American court of the moment Amber Heard allegedly severed the top of his finger after hurling a vodka bottle at him during an argument in Australia.

Heard appeared to be on the verge of tears as her former husband delivered graphic testimony while only metres from her about how he suffered a serious hand injury.

Depp was giving evidence for a second day in the $US50m ($67m) defamation trial. He is suing Heard for claiming she was a victim of domestic abuse. She has countersued for $US100m.

Depp described a volatile relationship and compared being married to Heard to being with his abusive mother. Heard was often violent and he would have to lock himself in the bathroom to avoid her, as he had done as a child, the court in Fairfax, Virginia, was told.

In one of the most infamous episodes of their marriage, Depp said he was in Australia shooting the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean film in March 2015 and was in a rented house with Heard. She was allegedly furious about discussions of a postnuptial agreement. Depp said Heard was “hammering him” with “brutal words” and he locked himself in “at least nine” bedrooms or bathrooms during the day to avoid a confrontation.

The court was told that Heard had been banging on the door before suddenly stopping. Depp said he was under stress and went to a bar in the house, where he broke a months-long sobriety. He grabbed a bottle of vodka and a glass and poured himself two or three “stiff shots”, the court was told.

Heard entered the room and was furious that he was drinking, Depp said. She was screaming and threw a bottle of vodka at him. “It just went right past my head and smashed behind me,” Depp said, adding he poured himself a shot from a larger bottle.

He said Heard was “flinging insults left, right and centre” then grabbed the second bottle and hurled it at him. It shattered and he felt no pain at first. He said he felt “heat and as if something were dripping down my hand . . . and then I realised that the tip of my finger had been severed and I was looking directly at my bones sticking out”.

He said that before he called his personal doctor, he scrawled on the wall in his own blood “little reminders from our past that essentially represented lies she had told me”.

Depp said Heard also stubbed out a cigarette on his cheek. The court was shown a picture of Depp in hospital with wrapping on his finger and a mark on his cheek. Images of his finger were displayed. Depp said he lied to doctors about the injury and did not mention Heard. He returned to Los Angeles for surgery and completed filming with a bandage. The special effects team edited it out of the film, he said.

Under cross-examination from Benjamin Rottenborn, one of Heard’s lawyers, Depp dismissed the argument that Heard’s 2018 column in The Washington Post did not mention him by name. Depp said there were “sneaky ways of writing things” and just because he was not directly mentioned did not mean it was not obvious he was the target.

The lawyer showed Depp a newspaper article from October 2018 reporting that Disney was to cut ties with him.

Rottenborn said it was published two months before Heard’s article, suggesting it could not have swayed Disney’s decision. Depp agreed he would not return to work with Disney.

Depp, 58, and Heard, 35, met on the set of the 2011 film The Rum Diary. They married in 2015 but divorced two years later. The trial continues.

The Times