Amber Heard has told London’s High Court that her ex-husband Johnny Depp “threatened to kill” her many times throughout their tumultuous relationship.
The actress took the witness stand this morning in her ex-husband’s libel trial against The Sun’s publishers News Group Newspapers, over a 2018 article that labelled the actor a “wife beater.”
Johnny has maintained that he was never physically abusive towards Amber, while Amber and NGN are defending the article by trying to prove that he was.
In her witness statement, Amber claimed that “some incidents were so severe that I was afraid he was going to kill me.”
“I was afraid he was going to kill me, either intentionally or just by losing control and going too far. He explicitly threatened to kill me many times, especially later in our relationship.”
The 34-year-old alleged that Johnny said the only way out of their relationship “was death”, and accused him of “extremely controlling and intimidating behaviour”.
“He demeaned me anytime I tried to wear anything that could be seen as sexy, calling me a ‘whore’, ‘slut’, ‘fame-hungry’ and ‘an attention whore’, but it got worse over time,” she claimed.
“For the most part, it wasn’t worth responding because it only antagonised him.”
“He is very good at manipulating people,” she said in her statement.
“He would blame all his actions on a self-created third party instead of himself, which he often called ‘the monster’. He would speak about it as if it was another person or personality and not him doing all these things.”
“When I say he was dark, he had a violent and dark way of speaking: the way he talked about our relationship being ‘dead or alive’ and telling me that death was the only way out of the relationship.”
“To hear him talk about his childhood or past relationships, he is always the victim. He functions off zero accountability to anyone and thrives off others who provide him with that.”
“I thought he could get better and that he would, and I wanted that so badly right to the end,” Amber continued.
“After violent episodes, his team would try to convince me to stay with him or to come back, often telling me he was sorry and would get clean for me.”
“I think I stayed not only because I had hope of him getting clean and things changing, but also because of the responsibility I felt, being told I was the one to motivate him and help him to get clean.”
Amber described her relationship with Johnny as “extremely violent” and said that anger was the “response” to it.
Lawyers for NGN are basing their defence on Amber’s 14 allegations of abuse, which include claims of bust-ups between 2013 and 2016.
The Pirates of the Caribbean star has continuously denied allegations that he was abusive towards Amber, who filed for divorce in 2016.
Johnny believes the “wife beater” article was an attempt to “finish his career” by quoting victims of Harvey Weinstein, and linking the allegations against him to the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements.
