'I never hit a woman': Johnny Depp's testimony in the trial against Amber Heard

Johnny Depp took the stand in his media libel trial against his ex-wife Amber Heard, from whom he separated in 2016. Since last week the former couple has been facing each other in a court in Fairfax, Virginia, over an opinion piece that the actress wrote in The Washington Post, in which she described as a “victim of domestic violence”.

“About six years ago, Miss Heard committed some rather heinous and disturbing criminal acts against me that were not based on any kind of truth,” Depp, 58, said looking at the jury. “It was a complete shock that I did, I just didn't need to go in that direction since none of that had ever happened.”

“During the relationship there were discussions and things of that nature, but I never got to the point of hitting Miss Heard in any way nor have I hit any woman in my life,” the movie star said.

“The truth is the only thing that interests me. Lies won't get you anywhere, but lies are built on lies and built on lies,” Depp said.

“I am obsessed with the truth,” he said.

Asked about the beginnings of his romance with Heard, whom he fell in love with on the set of the film “The Rum Diary”, Depp said: “At the beginning of my relationship, from what I remember, she was too good to be true. Attentive, loving, intelligent, fun... We had many things in common such as music, literature... A year and a half was great.”

“When I came home from work, she would sit on the couch and give me a glass of wine. I was taking off my shoes. I've never experienced anything like that in my life. It was like a routine. Once I remember that I came back from work and she was busy talking on the phone. I sat on the couch and took off my shoes. She came up to me and said, “What did you just do? Did you take off your shoes? That's my job, not yours. And he went to get a glass of wine,” the actor recalled.

“Then he became someone else,” he said.

Depp sued his ex-wife for implying that he was a perpetrator and asks her for $50 million in damages. Heard, meanwhile, claims him twice as much, 100 million, and claims to have suffered “unbridled physical violence and abuse” at the hands of him.

The protagonist of “Pirates of the Caribbean” also told about his abusive upbringing at the hands of his mother while his own lawyers questioned him.

Depp described “verbal abuse, insults, intimidation” by his mother. She took every “opportunity to be cruel” and “make fun of any flaws one might have.”

“I would call myself crow's eye, one-eyed, anything that could degrade me, humiliate me,” he continued. “I even had to put on a good eye patch to strengthen the bad eye. I am legally blind in my left eye.”

Depp laughed nervously as he remembered that he threw ashtrays, high-heeled shoes or phones at him. “Whatever was at hand.” “In our house we were never exposed to any kind of safety or protection, all we could do was stay out of the line of fire,” he said.

“Physical violence, physical abuse. That was a constant. You didn't know what would happen,” he added. “The verbal abuse, the psychological abuse was almost worse than the beatings. The physical pain you can take it. But psychological and emotional abuse is what destroyed us.”

He said that his father remained “stoic” when his mother assaulted them.

“There was never a time, never a time when my father lost control or attacked my mother or even said something bad to my mother,” he said. “There were a couple of times when he went too far and I could see his eyes fill with tears as he looked at her without saying anything. The most I would do, I would hit a wall.”

Depp said that his father left overnight when he was 15 years old. “When my father left, I didn't realize he was gone,” Depp said. “Hours later my mom came home from work, around 3.30 in the afternoon. He came through the door and stopped and walked around, felt something. She told me your dad left.”

“She ran to her bedroom and closet, opened the door and there was her coat rack and all her belongings were gone. I was pretty upset. I took his car and drove to my father's work and sat down in front of him,” he said.

“I said, listen, it looks like someone stole all your clothes and said 'yes, it's over for me. I can't do it anymore. You're the man now, '” he recalled. “Those words didn't suit me. I didn't feel like I was ready to hear those words.”

“My mother went into a very deep and dark depression and one afternoon I fell asleep and woke up and entered the living room and saw my mother very weak, almost as if she was walking in slow motion. I knew something was terribly wrong. There was drool coming out of his mouth. The front door opened, my uncle and two paramedics came in and put her on a stretcher and took her out of the house to take her to the hospital and give her a stomach wash,” Depp said. The mother had tried to take her own life by taking pills.

When questioned about the lesson that his parents' complicated relationship left him in his childhood, the actor said that based on his experience as a child he knew how he would raise his children. “When Vanessa (Paradis) got pregnant, I knew I had to do the opposite. Never raise your voice in front of the boys, and never yell 'No' at them.”

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