Johnny Depp’s future in Hollywood will hang on decision by JK Rowling

The actor’s role as one of Hollywood’s most powerful stars rests on an author who claims herself to be a DV victim.

Johnny Depp's future in Hollywood will come down to a decision by JK Rowling. Picture: AFP/Getty Images

Johnny Depp’s role as one of Hollywood’s most powerful stars rests on an author who claims herself to be the victim of domestic violence.

The actor is believed to have begun filming the third instalment of JK Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them franchise, the Harry Potter spin-off in which he portrays the villainous wizard Gellert Grindelwald.

The decision of whether he keeps the role after the High Court ruling that he had abused his former wife, the actress Amber Heard, 34, will be seen as a battle of commercial might against the influence of the #MeToo movement.

The first Fantastic Beasts was filmed before Heard accused Depp of domestic abuse in 2016. Depp, 57, sued The Sun over a column in April 2018 that asked why Rowling was continuing to allow an alleged “wife-beater” to star in the sequel, The Crimes of Grindelwald.

JK Rowling claimed to be a survivor of domestic abuse. Picture: Getty Images

The previous December Rowling had written on her website that although she had found reports about Depp and Heard’s relationship deeply concerning, “based on our understanding of the circumstances, the film-makers and I are not only comfortable sticking with our original casting, but genuinely happy to have Johnny playing a major character in the movies”.

A month before the start of the libel trial Rowling, 55, published a blog post in which she claimed to be a survivor of domestic abuse and sexual assault who had endured a “violent marriage” to her first husband. He denied the allegations. Once Depp’s libel hearing began Neil Blair, Rowling’s agent, attended the High Court with the actor’s lawyers.

Mark Borkowski, a public relations expert, said that he believed it would be difficult for Depp to find roles in family films. “His brand had a sort of edge and that edge now has turned to something that is really ugly and abusive,” he said. “In this new woke world, the culture wars, you do not want to be involved with a story [that] will not go away. This is like an indelible stain on his character. It’s very difficult to see how children’s authors like JK Rowling or children’s entertainment companies like Disney can continue to promote somebody who is a wife-beating drug addict.”

Depp, who found fame in the US TV series 21 Jump Street, became a Hollywood star with Edward Scissorhands in 1990. Over the next decades he won acclaim with roles ranging from Sweeney Todd to JM Barrie and the US gangster “Whitey” Bulger, with his films earning more than $10 billion at the box office.

Since 2003 he has been best known for playing Captain Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. By 2015 and the fifth instalment, Dead Men Tell No Tales – titled Salazar’s Revenge in the UK – he appeared to have become disillusioned with the role. In a text to a friend he wrote: “I will not again be doing anything that involves the discussion of furthering my embarrassment of having whored for all these f..king wasted piece of shit nothing years on characters that I so ignorantly started to think of as my legacy.”

Depp, who was estimated to have earned $100 million per instalment, was reported to have been dropped from the sixth film shortly after Heard claimed that she had been a victim of domestic abuse. Weeks before the libel trial Jerry Bruckheimer, the films’ producer, said that he was “not quite sure what Johnny’s role is going to be”.

Depp’s fans responded with a petition to have him reinstated, accusing Disney, which owns the franchise, of “jumping on the #MeToo movement”.

Despite Depp’s successful film career the libel trial was told of his financial concerns. He told the court that in 2016 he had discovered his previous managers had stolen $650 million and left him with 17 years of unpaid taxes.

The excesses of his drug-fuelled lifestyle were also laid bare. When he was arrested in 1994 for wrecking a New York hotel room where he was staying with his girlfriend, the British model Kate Moss, there had been a sense of bad-boy glamour. The image of the hard-partying star he cultivated mirrored that of Keith Richards, the Rolling Stones guitarist who inspired his portrayal of Jack Sparrow. Depp started his own rock group, the Hollywood Vampires, featuring Alice Cooper and Joe Perry, which is due to start its European tour in Birmingham next August.

In the High Court, however, Sasha Wass, QC, for The Sun, said that the actor had become “part of a clique of ageing male rabble-rousers” who abused alcohol and drugs together. The behaviour appeared to spiral out of control, with reports before the trial that some film directors had become exasperated. Heard told the court that Depp’s wealth and unquestioning entourage of staff, advisers and hangers-on meant that no one complained about his behaviour.

The response of Depp’s fellow A-list stars will be key to his future as one of the industry’s biggest earners. The High Court was told that he became obsessively jealous of his wife’s co-stars. Heard said that he would create nicknames for those he considered a sexual threat, with references to Leonardo DiCaprio – his co-star in the 1993 hit What’s Eating Gilbert Grape – as “pumpkin head”, Channing Tatum as “potato head” and “Jim Turd Sturgess”.

Depp with Amber Heard in 2015. Picture: AFP

Other actors he allegedly believed had pursued Heard, who is bisexual, included James Franco, Kevin Costner, Liam Hemsworth, Billy Bob Thornton, Kelli Garner and Eddie Redmayne, the star of the Fantastic Beasts films.

Danielle Rossen, president of a celebrity crisis PR firm, told Reuters that Depp may find it easier than expected to remain in the cast of Hollywood superstars. “We are used to celebrities doing crazy, off-the-beaten-path-type of things,” she said. “I think as a society we are a little immune to it at this point.”

In the face of Heard’s allegations Depp retained the support of his two previous long-term partners: Winona Ryder, 49, his co-star in Edward Scissorhands, and Vanessa Paradis, 47, the singer who is mother to his children, Lily-Rose, 21, and Jack, 18. Ryder and Paradis said he had never been violent.

The Times