‘I was turned into Quasimodo’: Inside Johnny Depp, Amber Heard’s messy divorce

Johnny Depp discussed mutilating Elon Musk and tried to get ex-wife Amber Heard fired from a major film, court hears.

US actor Johnny Depp arrives on the fourth day of his libel trial at the High Court in London. Picture: AFP

Johnny Depp has described how his reputation went from “Cinderella to Quasimodo” after he was accused of domestic violence by his former wife.

The Pirates of the Caribbean actor said that in revenge he sought to have Amber Heard sacked from a film role.

Depp, 57, is suing Dan Wootton, executive editor of The Sun, and News Group Newspapers, its publisher, for a 2018 article that called him a “wife beater”. Five minutes of his answers to questions about Heard’s evidence, relating to allegations of sexual violence, were heard in private during his fourth day in the witness box at the High Court.

He had earlier told the court: “I had been characterised globally as a wife beater and I went from Cinderella to Quasimodo in 0.6 seconds and I was without a voice at that point. Ms Heard made sure the news media got hold of it.”

Photos shown in court show damage to a home where the couple stayed in Queensland in 2015.

Depp told the court he had sought to have Heard, 34, replaced in the sequel to her 2018 action film Aquaman but denied he was behind a 400,000-signature petition calling for her to be fired.

After their divorce settlement in August 2016 Depp wrote to her agent, Christian Carino, 51, saying: “She’s begging for global humiliation. She’s gonna get it. I have no mercy, no fear and not an ounce of emotion or what I thought was love for this gold-digging, low level, dime a dozen, mushy, pointless dangling overused flappy fish market …”

The actor also claimed in the message that Heard was being assisted by Elon Musk, and wrote about cutting off the technology billionaire’s penis.

On Friday, Depp denied attacking Heard at their penthouse in Los Angeles after she had a dinner with friends to celebrate her 30th birthday in April 2016. He said that Heard had been angry because he arrived late after a meeting with his business manager during which he received “rather unfortunate news about (his) financial affairs”.

Depp denied throwing a magnum of champagne at Heard, grabbing her hair, pushing her on to the bed or having “bumped chests” with her. He said that he had wanted to escape his wife’s “anger and rage towards my tardiness” and so had sent a message to his security team saying he wanted to go to another of his homes before leaving at 4.30am.

Johnny Depp claims Amber Heard threw a bottle at him, severing his finger.

He said that it was “very possible” he had left a note reading “happy f..king birthday”. Two days later he received an image taken by his cleaner of faeces on his bed. Depp said that it was clear the mess had not been left by one of Heard’s two miniature Yorkshire terriers. “I was convinced it was either Ms Heard herself or one of her cohorts,” he said. Heard’s friend Tillett Wright, 34, a photographer and TV host, was the “only person crass enough to commit such an act”, Depp said.

US actress Amber Heard, left, outside the High Court in London. Picture: AFP

He countered Heard’s claims that his abuse of drink and drugs were responsible for their arguments by telling the court that she drank “two or three bottles” of wine a night. He also demonstrated how she would allegedly use her finger to “rub [cocaine] on her gums”. The court was told that her medical notes referred to a “history of substance abuse, including addiction to cocaine and liquor” and “severe outbursts of anger and rage”. Her schedule for their wedding in March 2015 included wanting to “arrange drugs for her friends”.

The Sun relies on 14 alleged incidents of domestic violence, all of which Depp denies. The actress Winona Ryder and the singer Vanessa Paradis, his former partners, are due to testify next week that he had not been violent to them. He told the court that he was never violent during his three-year relationship with the supermodel Kate Moss.

The Times