Amber Heard hired private investigator to dig up dirt on Johnny Depp but everyone praised him: 'He's an angel'
To prove a pattern of behavioral domestic abuse against her ex-husband, Amber Heard reportedly hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on Johnny Depp. However, the PI, despite his reputation in the entertainment industry, says he came up empty-handed.
The PI, former porn star-turned Hollywood 'fixer' Paul Barresi, has worked for the likes of Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Eddie Murphy, and was once even hired to investigate unproven claims that Tom Cruise had a gay affair.
He told Daily Mail that Heard's legal team reached out to him last summer to use his services to locate people who had been verbally or physically abused by the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' actor so that they could appear as star witnesses in the upcoming defamation case against Heard in the US and in Depp's libel case against British tabloid The Sun in UK.
"Amber's lawyers contacted me and said you're the right man for this job, that's how they brought me in. She was emotionally spent and battered and tormented - it was a volatile relationship," Barresi told the publication.
However, he admitted that although he tracked down and interviewed over 100 people across the US and Europe who had worked with Depp on movie sets over the past 30 years, none of them had a single complaint to make against him.
"I went to the US, France, Italy, Britain, everywhere that Johnny Depp roamed, everywhere he walked, I couldn't find one instance, or at least an admitted one, where he was physically abusive to a woman, smacked or beaten around, he's like an angel. Not one said a deprecating thing. I interviewed dozens of people, who knew him going as far back as three decades ago, and nobody had one bad thing to say about him. In fact, they couldn't say enough about his ever-flowing outpouring of generosity and tender heart," he said.
He went on to say that although he found that Depp had always treated his colleagues and acquaintances with nothing but respect and they will likely be loyal to him through and through, he doubted if most of them could be called his friends.
"I wanted to stress the point that over the years based on people I spoke with close to Depp, he is without question proven himself a man who is generous to a fault. Dating as far back as the mid-nineties, he's covered legal costs, medical bills and even paid rent for his friends. The irony is they appear to have undying loyalty to him, but I'm not entirely convinced they are his friends," he said.
Apparently, when Barresi tried to interview celebrity tattooist Jonathan Shaw, who did most of Depp's body artwork and has been the actor's close friend for 30 years, he reportedly told him, "The only thing I would be willing to help that gold-digging w***e do is help load the gun she wanted to use to blow her f**king brains out."
As a result, he added that he kind of sympathized with what the 'Aquaman' actress might have gone through to simply have a discussion with Depp. "I have to say that the people around Depp are more volatile, even his lawyer Adam Waldman, who is like a bulldog, and called me a 'bag man.' That was why Amber's frustrations grew. I don't think there's much difference between verbal and physical abuse, it does equal harm," he said.
A spokesperson for Heard denied the claims made by the PI. "Mr. Barresi hasn't been involved with Ms. Heard's team since he was let go last year, and his account is entirely inconsistent with the testimony of multiple witnesses," the spokesperson told the Mail.