Amber Heard Testifies Against Johnny Depp in Virginia Defamation Saga

After sitting silently inside a chilly Fairfax County, Virginia, courtroom for three weeks as Johnny Depp and those closest to her ex-husband described her as an abusive manipulator, Amber Heard took the stand on Wednesday to tell her side of the story.

“I am here because my ex-husband is suing me for an op-ed I wrote,” Heard, 36, told Virginia jurors who must resolve a $50 million defamation lawsuit Depp filed against her, and also address at least some claims in a countersuit she filed against him. “I struggle to find the words to describe how painful this is.”

“This is horrible for me to sit here for weeks and relive everything,” she said soon after, before adding: “This is the most painful and difficult thing I have ever gone through, for sure.”

As Heard began her testimony, a sunglasses-clad Depp sat just feet away—declining to look at his ex-wife and instead apparently writing at his seat.

The testimony came in the fourth week of the civil trial centering on the allegation by Depp that Heard “devastated” his career with a 2018 Washington Post op-ed calling herself a domestic violence survivor. Heard has denied the allegations and insisted that the editorial—which does not name her ex-husband but was published two years after she sought a restraining order against him—was about her experience more generally. She has since countersued Depp for $100 million after at least one of his ex-attorneys suggested her account was a “hoax.”

Over the course of the trial, Depp’s legal team presented 29 witnesses in an attempt to prove that Heard was not only the abuser in the couple’s short-lived union that officially ended in 2017, but that her op-ed destroyed the actor’s rep and cost him $40 million in acting opportunities.

Heard emphasized the difficulty of revisiting so many painful moments, noting Wednesday that it was brutal to “hear people that I knew—some well, some not” take the stand.

On the stand, Depp spoke out against “heinous and disturbing” allegations that he abused Heard, walking jurors through shocking allegations of abuse on her part, including an infamous incident in which he claimed the actress threw a vodka bottle that severed his fingertip.

One problem for Depp: His version of events about that brutal episode may have been undercut when he appeared to say on audio played in court that he had cut his own finger.

Still, as Depp and his team went to great lengths to suggest Heard essentially canceled an innocent man she herself abused—and legions of online fans mocked her—the testimony directly from Heard offered a chance to reset the narrative after she sacked her PR team.

Her lawyers began offering their version of events a day earlier with their first witness, an expert psychologist who did not see Heard as a patient, but analyzed her to prep for the trial—and said Heard showed clear signs of intimate partner violence by Depp. The witness also recapped an allegedly violent episode in which Heard said Depp had kicked her while in a fit of jealous rage over her work with James Franco.

Jurors must decide whether Heard acted with “actual malice” when she wrote the Post piece—meaning she knew the contents were false—or that the actress published the piece with “reckless disregard” for the truth. While the actress did not mention Depp in her op-ed, she has long accused her ex-husband of abuse, including one incident where Depp allegedly threw a phone at her that left her with a bruised face.

After describing her childhood and the beginning of her acting career, Heard told jurors how she met Depp during a 2008 audition for the Rum Diaries.

“I wasn’t a fan of his work, I wasn’t a fan of him, but I knew who he was—he was one of the most famous people in the world,” Heard said.

The actress noted that the initial conversation with Depp, who was twice her age, was “remarkable” because he was “this world-famous actor, and here we are getting along and talking about obscure books and old blues.”

While on set in Puerto Rico for the movie, Heard said she felt the professional lines with Depp were “blurred,” recalling one moment when the actor lifted up the back of a robe she was wearing for a scene with his boot.

“I kind of turned around and giggled… [and he] kind of playfully pushed me down on this bed, sofa,” Heard testified, noting that she celebrated her 23rd birthday while on set. “Playful and flirtatious. And he said, ‘Yum.’ And kind of lifted his eyebrows up like that.”

Four years after the film premiere, in 2015, the pair married before they began to divorce a year later. In November 2020, a London judge found that there was “overwhelming evidence” that Depp had assaulted Heard repeatedly throughout their marriage, and she was “in fear of her life.”

Depp denied all allegations of abuse on the stand, stating that he has “never struck any woman” in his life. “My goal is the truth, because it…