Johnny Depp wants to “resume the course of his life”, assured his lawyer on Friday, on the last day of the proceedings of a lawsuit for defamation which he is bringing against his ex-wife Amber Heard, before an American court where the the most scabrous details of a “toxic” relationship between the two actors.
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“Six years ago to the day, on May 27, 2016, Ms. Heard walked into court and filed a false domestic violence complaint against her husband of 15 months, Johnny Depp,” said Camille Vasquez.
“It was a lie, she knew it, he knew it,” but “the world only saw what she wanted to show him,” she added. She “didn’t just want the divorce, she wanted to ruin it.”
“Mrs. Heard is actually the aggressor and Mr. Depp the victim,” she said, asking the jury to allow Johnny Depp to “resume the course of his life.”
Amber Heard’s lawyers are also due to present their findings on Friday.
The seven jurors will then retire to deliberate. If they do not agree on a verdict, they will return on Tuesday, Monday being a holiday in the United States.
In six weeks of debates, the jury heard dozens of hours of testimony in this trial held in Fairfax, near Washington, highly publicized and broadcast live on television.
“harassed, humiliated”
The star of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” saga is suing his ex-wife for defamation, who wrote in a column published in the Washington Post in 2018 to be “a public figure representing domestic violence”, without naming Johnny Depp.
The 58-year-old actor claims to have never raised his hand on a woman and denounces “mind-boggling” accusations. He claims 50 million dollars in damages, believing that this platform has ruined his reputation and his career.
Amber Heard, who appeared in particular in “Justice League” and “Aquaman”, counterattacked and asked for the double. According to her, this “futile” complaint prolongs “the abuse and harassment” of her ex-husband and has blocked her own career.
Family, friends, collaborators, agents, studio executives, psychologists, surgeons, financial experts… Several dozen witnesses marched to the bar, painting a portrait of the couple far removed from Hollywood glamor.
The actress said that Johnny Depp became a “monster” under the influence of an explosive cocktail of drugs and alcohol, resisting all his pleas for treatment.
Johnny Depp reportedly promised her ‘global humiliation’ if she left him and, when she did, she became the target of a social media smear campaign.
“I am harassed, humiliated, threatened every day, just because I am in this courtroom”, she said Thursday, very moved, adding to receive “thousands” of death threats since the beginning of the court case.
Rumor
Johnny Depp can count on the support of hundreds of admirers who cheer him every day since April 11 in court.
The 36-year-old actress assures that the violence she attributes to Johnny Depp began in 2012. They would have reached their climax, a rape using a bottle of alcohol, in March 2015, a month after their wedding, when the actor was filming episode 5 of “Pirates” in Australia.
During this dispute, Johnny Depp had the end of a severed finger and was hospitalized. He claims it was caused by a splinter from a bottle thrown by Amber Heard. She says he hurt himself.
Only two other celebrities testified: actress Ellen Barkin, ex-girlfriend of Johnny Depp in the late 1990s, described a man who was “drunk almost all the time”, jealous and possessive and who, in anger, had launched a bottle in his direction.
British supermodel Kate Moss, another “ex” of the actor, has denied an old rumor that he would have one day pushed her down the stairs.
Johnny Depp had already lost a first defamation lawsuit in London in 2020, against the tabloid The Sun, which called him a “violent husband”.
The two actors claimed to have lost between 40 and 50 million dollars in fees since the publication of the Washington Post column.
