Eating his words? Johnny Depp read aloud his past texts about ex-wife Amber Heard in court — and the actor confessed to regretting some of the more aggressive messages.
While fielding questions during a hearing in Fairfax, Virginia, on Thursday, April 21, the 58-year-old Pirates of the Caribbean star was prompted by attorney Ben Rottenborn to review a text from October 2016. “I’ll just say that I’m not proud of any of the language that I used in these [messages],” Depp said.
He went on to read several expletive-filled texts, one of which referred to Heard, 36, as a “slippery whore.” Depp claimed, “I’m not sure I sent that text,” before a second message regarding Heard’s “rotting corpse” was presented to the court.
The Sweeney Todd star previously stated in court that he was “embarrassed” by the shocking messages, describing his sense of humor as “dark,” but arguing that he wanted to “clear the record” about Heard’s allegations of domestic violence. The former couple were married from 2015 to 2017. Depp is suing the Pineapple Express actress for defamation in response to an op-ed she penned in 2018 sharing her alleged experience as a survivor of abuse.
“It’s pretty strange when one day you’re Cinderella, so to speak, then 0.6 seconds you’re Quasimodo,” the Golden Globe winner claimed under oath on Tuesday, April 19. “I didn’t deserve that, nor did my children, nor did the people who have believed in me for all these years. I didn’t want any of those people to believe that I had done them wrong or lied to them or that I was a fraud. I pride myself on honesty.”
The Kentucky native shares daughter Lily-Rose, 22, and son Jack, 20, with ex Vanessa Paradis. Depp went on to slam Heard’s “heinous” accusations against him, asserting, “Never did I myself reach the point of striking Ms. Heard in any way, nor have I ever struck any woman in my life.”
Depp and the Aquaman star have been embroiled in a number of legal battles since calling it quits. The Oscar nominee previously filed a libel lawsuit against the U.K. newspaper The Sun for referring to him as a “wife beater” in a 2018 article, and the High Court of Justice ruled in November 2020 that The Sun’s article was not libelous because Heard’s allegations were “substantially true.”
Heard has not yet taken the stand in Virginia, but she issued a strongly worded message regarding the case — and her op-ed — before announcing that she was taking a break from social media.
“I never named him, rather I wrote about the price women pay for speaking against men in power,” she wrote via Instagram earlier this month. “I continue to pay that price, but hopefully, when this case concludes, I can move on and so can Johnny. I have always maintained a love for Johnny and it brings me great pain to have to live out the details of our past life together in from of the world.”
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 for confidential support.
