Johnny Depp has opened up for the first time regarding the defamation lawsuit against his ex-wife Amber Heard, three years after a court announced a verdict in his favour. Quizzed if he regretted airing the dirty laundry in public during the televised case, the Hollywood star said he knew it had gone far and that he would have to "semi-eviscerate" himself, but he was prepared to fight until the end.
"Everyone was saying, ‘It'll go away!' But I can't trust that. What will go away? The fiction pawned around the f****** globe? No, it won't," Depp told The Sunday Times.
"If I don't try to represent the truth, it will be like I've actually committed the acts I am accused of. And my kids will have to live with it. Their kids. Kids that I've met in hospitals," he added, referring to daughter Lily-Rose, 26, and son Jack, 23.
"So the night before the trial in Virginia, I didn't feel nervous. If you don't have to memorise lines, if you're just speaking the truth? Roll the dice," Depp said.
The Pirates of the Caribbean actor said he knew "none of this was going be easy, but I didn't care. I thought, ‘I'll fight until the bitter f****** end.' And if I end up pumping gas? That's all right. I've done that before.”
Depp and Heard: Relationship timeline
Depp met Heard in 2009, on the set of The Rum Diary, a film based on the Hunter S Thompson novel. Depp was 45, Heard was 22. While Heard was committed to Hawaiian artist and model Tasya van Ree, Depp was still with the mother of his two children, Vanessa Paradis.
In 2012, Depp separated from his long-time girlfriend and started pursuing Heard as romance blossomed between the two, despite the 22-year age gap. After a whirlwind romance, the couple got married in 2015, but soon trouble brewed, and they parted ways in 2016.
In March 2019, Depp sued his ex-wife for defamation over a 2018 op-ed she penned in a national daily. After a controversial, live-televised six-week trial in 2022, a verdict was reached that found Heard liable on all three counts of defamation.
She was ordered to pay $10.35 million in damages, and Depp was to pay $2 million, since Heard won one of the three claims in her countersuit.
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