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'He was the love of my life': Shattered Amber Heard recalls the MONSTER inside Johnny Depp

She testified that the turning point in their relationship came when Depp first slapped her in 2013. "I’ll never forget it. It changed my life,” she said.

Amber Heard testified on Wednesday, April 4, that Depp was this Jekyll-and-Hyde man who would beat her and threaten to kill her when he abused drugs and alcohol. The 'Aquaman' actress took her stand over three weeks after Depp’s side presented its case. “He was the love of my life but he was also this other thing … And that other thing was awful,” Heard said in the Fairfax, Virginia, courtroom. "An awful thing that would come out and take over and you couldn’t see the Johnny I loved underneath it," added, referring to Depp as a "monster". 

Getting emotional in the courtroom multiple times, Heard said she never knew which version of Depp she was going to get. "Johnny on speed is very different from Johnny on opiates. Johnny on opiates is very different from Adderall and cocaine Johnny, which is very different from quaaludes Johnny, but I had to get good at paying attention to the different versions of him,” Heard said. 

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“When I was around Johnny, I felt like the most beautiful person in the world,” she said. “It made me feel seen. It made me feel like a million dollars.” She testified that the turning point in their relationship came when Depp first slapped her in 2013. "I’ll never forget it. It changed my life,” she said.

Heard said that the two were sitting on a couch when she asked him about a tattoo that he had which she was unable to make out. Depp told her it said “Wino”, which was a cover-up from a previous tattoo that said "Winona Forever”. This prompted Heard to laugh, but Depp, who allegedly did not find it funny, struck her across the face, Heard said. “I laughed because I didn’t know what else to do. I thought this must be a joke,” she said. She said she though he would laugh too, he he instead yelled, "You think it’s so funny? You think it’s funny, bitch? You think you’re a funny bi***?"

Depp allegedly slapped her again and then began begging for forgiveness. “I will never do that again, I’m so sorry, baby … I thought I put the monster away,” Depp allegedly said. She said that Depp would also smash things, break furniture, throw cups at her, and call her a “who**." She also accused Depp of being jealous and suspecting her of cheating. She recalled how he once used a Bic lighter to burn a painting an ex-lover had given her. 

Heard accused Depp of threatening to kill her while they were in the Bahamas in July 2013. “He slams me up by my neck and holds me there for a second and tells me that he could f—ing kill me and that I was an embarrassment,” she said. Heard said that despite allegedly being abused, she hoped things would eventually get better. “What kept me in it was waiting for the other shoe to drop, the sobriety shoe,” she said. But, she claimed, things only fot worse with Depp's continued addiction to drugs and alcohol.

Heard recalled shooting for a film based on the life of Hunter S. Thompson when the two had a kissing scene. “It didn’t feel like a normal scene anymore … it felt more real,” Heard told the jury. “He grabbed my face and pulled me into him and really kissed me.”

Heard recently fired her PR team and switched to a new one days before her testimony in court. Heard ditched crisis PR firm Precision Strategies last week because she was unhappy about how the trial was being covered. In the case's recent developments, Johnny Depp's bodyguard Malcolm Connolly said that he had noticed injuries and marks on the actor's face as his marriage with Amber Heard started getting strained. On Thursday, April 28, Connolly took the stand at the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial, telling the court that he saw Depp go from being happy in love to "quiet" as Heard became more "dominant" and "demanding".

Another update in the case revealed that Amber Heard reportedly sought a payoff from Johnny Depp in exchange for holding off on going public with their life full of scandals. Heard said she would not immediately file an order of protection if her estranged husband gave her access to his SUV and three downtown Los Angeles penthouses at his expense, revealed a 2016 letter presented at the trial. 

Depp has finished testifying in his $50 million defamation trial against Heard. At the trial, the actor claimed that he was telling the "truth" for his family and children's sake. He also claimed that Heard's allegations against him have ruined his relations in Hollywood. The trial is expected to last at least six weeks. While jurors have heard several contradictory accounts of the relationship between the former pair, Heard's team has portrayed Depp as an abusive partner who was regularly into alcohol and drugs. Depp's team, on the other hand, has labeled Heard's allegations of violence as a "hoax" and claimed that it is a deliberate attempt to destroy Depp's reputation.