Johnny Depp says Amber Heard punched him for being late for her b'day bash the night he learned he'd lost $650M
The London High Court on Monday, July 13, heard conflicting versions of what happened on the night Johnny Depp found out he had lost $650 million in a business meeting in 2016. During the fifth day of Depp's testimony in the libel case against the British newspaper, The Sun, over a 2018 article, which branded him a 'wife-beater,' the 'Pirates Of The Caribbean' actor said his ex-wife, Amber Heard, had thrown a "haymaker" punch at him in 2016 following her 30th birthday party, to which Depp had been late due to an "unpleasant and ugly" meeting with his business advisers.
"I was in the early stage of learning from my recently acquired new business manager that the former business managers had (taken) quite a lot of my money. They had stolen my money," he said. The sum of money that he had lost, he had earned by starring in the 'Pirates' franchise.
At the meeting, about which he had informed Heard, Depp found out that his previous managers had lost $650 million he had made from films, which his lawyers concluded was a 'ludicrous' sum of money. He also discovered that he owed $100 million because he had not paid his taxes for 17 years. He told the court that when he was in bed that night reading, the 'Aquaman' actress accused him of making a fool of her in front of her friends and threw a 'haymaker' at him.
In a "secret" recording of the pair talking in July 2016, the actor is heard telling his ex "you f***ing haymakered me, man." The actor also added, "you came around the bed to f***ing start punching on me." When asked what a "haymaker" was, Depp replied: "It's just a type of wild swinging… kind of a roundhouse punch, as it were. It's a bit of a wild swing, but effective if it reaches the target."
However, that was Depp's account of what went down. According to Heard, after losing the huge sum of money, her former spouse, whom she often referred to as 'the monster' grabbed her by the hair and chucked a magnum of champagne at her, the lawyers for The Sun told the court. Apparently, Depp hurled the bottle, grabbed Heard's hair and threw her on their bed. He then left a note saying “Happy f***ing birthday” in 2016.
In his testimony, Depp denied the allegations that he attacked his ex-wife on her birthday. In his defense, he said he had severed his finger in a row with Heard shortly before her birthday and consequently contracted the superbug MRSA. He said that injury would have made it hard for him to grab Heard's hair as claimed by the other side.
The fact that he lost a portion of his finger is not under debate as the court heard last week Depp used his severed stump to write 'I love u' on a mirror after the argument in Australia. He was also questioned over the finger cast he had on during the time which he had decorated with a "little dinosaur."
The Sun lawyer David Sherborne also enquired about the transcript of a conversation the couple had in 2016 where Heard denied ever hitting her former husband. "Either I'm in a secret fight club ... (or) I have been plotting to do this for three years," Heard said, according to Sherborne. "No one is going to believe that." Depp responded by saying that he believed what Heard was saying was a "reverse confession". "It seemed everything she accused me of was something she had done to me," he said.
Heard is due to testify in court on Friday with the trial expected to last three weeks.