Amber Heard — Direct/Cross

THE WITNESS: Yes.

MS. HEARD: It would have been early 2012.

MS. HEARD: I reviewed my therapist's notes.

MS. HEARD: By reviewing my therapist's notes.

MS. HEARD: Well, I had always believed up until recently that it was - it had started later, that the violence started around early 2013, not early 2012.

MS. HEARD: I do.

MS. HEARD: You never forget it; that's how I remember it. It changes your life forever. You never forget the first time someone hits you like that. I just got the date wrong.

MS. HEARD: I'm embarrassed to say I think I would have liked to have believed that the period of time in which I had to fall in love with Johnny, in which we fell in love and he was sober and he wasn't violent to me, lasted a lot longer than it did. I think I would have liked to have believed that I wasn't hit so early in the relationship and still stayed.

MS. HEARD: He was also sober for a period in 2012, which was a peaceful time for us in which we fell in love. So I had kind of allowed myself, I guess, to forget that the beginning of that period, 2012, before he got sober, was really violent and chaotic as well. I'm embarrassed to say that.

MS. HEARD: They were called in December of 2011. They were called in 2012. They were called in 2013, in March, by the landlord. They -- I had sought advice from Laurel Anderson as to whether I should call the police.

MS. HEARD: I gave the last couple, I believe, last two incidents, maybe three.

MS. HEARD: I was following advice from my counsel.

MS. HEARD: There were 14 acts of physical abuse and violence and three acts of sexual abuse.

MS. HEARD: Well, I was not a party, a direct party; I was a witness, so it was whatever their counsel, the Sun counsel, chose.

MS. HEARD: Few months ago, February in 2022, so this year, was the first time I was asked to do so, other than cold in the deposition.

MS. HEARD: I had the benefit of my therapist's notes.

MS. HEARD: I looked at my therapist's notes. I had the benefits of those notes, which we had received in February, as well as I reviewed calendars, photos, text messages, my journals, my diaries, of which there were many. I put all of those together. It took a lot of time to be able to, you know, adequately refresh my recollection and fill in the details over the course of the five years we were together.

MS. HEARD: I kind of filled in and collected all of these various pieces of information and gave a fuller account, as best I could, for each incidence of violence that I had record of. I think it was called an interrogatory.

MS. HEARD: In this case.

MS. HEARD: Excuse me.

MS. HEARD: I did.

MS. HEARD: It was.

MS. HEARD: It was far too long.

MS. HEARD: That's not how your memory or my memory works. You know, we were together for five years, almost, four and a half, and it was a very violent, chaotic, at times very loving, emotional relationship. So as anyone can imagine, there was a lot going on, and unfortunately, the violence became almost normal, especially towards the end. It was just -- it's hard to even -- it's hard to say that now, but the violence was almost normal, and, you know, your brain does with trauma what it does, puts it away best you can.

MS. HEARD: So, I was -- frankly, I was shocked to see a lot of the information presented to me through my therapist's notes because she was taking --

MS. HEARD: Yes. There was a declaration in 2019. 1;

MS. HEARD: I was taking the advice of my counsel. We had done - it was to get it moved, I believe.

MS. HEARD: No.

MS. HEARD: No, I did not include all of the incidents of violence. That was not the point of making this declaration. We were making this declaration in effort to move it to California because as hard as it is to go through this sort of trial as it is, it's even harder to do so in a place that neither Johnny nor I are connected to.

MS. HEARD: You could say I posed with a guitar. It turns out I am unteachable.

MS. HEARD: Well, at first, it was - not at first - it was meant to be a way to get to the heart of our - some of our communication issues, in order to do - to discover in a therapeutic fashion kind of what was some of our issues in our communication.

MS. HEARD: Yes. "Couch" was a word that we had been given, that we decided upon, rather --

MS. HEARD: That it was -- it was a safe word. It was meant to be a safe word. Like a word -- like "truce," where you put down the proverbial guns and you say, "Truce. We're not fighting anymore." Couch was supposed to be a word that you used -- that we used as a truce. "I don't want to fight anymore. You win. Let's stop this." That was the mention of couch which you heard earlier in a recording.

MS. HEARD: Can you repeat the question?

MS. HEARD: Well, Johnny would always say the only way out of this was death. But in fights, in particularly heated ones, we had found, you know, we were using divorce in the fights, in some of our heated fights. We tried not to, but that kind of deteriorated after the December incident that I got beat up pretty badly in, and after that point, it was used a lot more often.

MS. HEARD: I see somebody who's changing always into different versions of a person that I recognize for a brief moment, and then he slips away and he disappears.

MS. HEARD: And then I get a different version of him I get the insecure, scared version of him that lashes out in a different medium every time. So if it's Adderall Junkie Johnny, then he's abusive, and he's a bully and he's mean and he's reactionary and he's incendiary and anything I do and say is cause for violence or anger.

MS. HEARD: If I speak to him honestly and bluntly, from the heart, I'm yelling at him If I argue back with him, then I'm abusive. If I don't say anything, then I am dismissive or absent or withdrawn or somewhere in those. If I engage with him, I'm part of the problem, I'm yelling, I'm mean. If I don't engage with him, then I'm mean, I'm part of the problem No matter what I do, I'm fucked. Because if I look at him the wrong way, he's a problem If I say the wrong thing, God knows what it is, I'm the problem I'm the problem either way.

MS. HEARD: That's the guy who's on a bunch of fucking speed.

MS. HEARD: That no matter -- my perception was that no matter what I did, no matter what I did to deescalate, walk away from him, to confront him, to try to -- nothing I did made a difference. Nothing I did changed his rage at me. Nothing I did changed the violence towards me. Nothing I did calmed him down. And I was constantly doing a juggling act of what kind of version of Johnny I was dealing with. There were different versions of him, and they were dramatically different from one another and even more so than them being different from one another, they didn't even sometimes remember what the other version did or said.

MS. HEARD: They acted almost like independent versions of this person depending on what combination of drugs and alcohol he was on.

MS. HEARD: That's what I was trying to express to him. It's just the futility of me responding and -- successfully and the futility of trying to constantly negotiate with him and the substances he was on at the time.

MS. HEARD: I believe that premiere was in New York City. It was a small independent film I shot I went back to New York to attend the premiere.

MS. HEARD: Yes.

MS. HEARD: That is a picture of me a few months -- I believe this is April of 2015, so it's a few Australia early -- yeah, early March, in which months after the March incident that happened in Johnny held me down on the countertops and my arms were cut on the glass and-- in that attack.

MS. HEARD: Those are scars that I obtained while ,11 Johnny was strangling me and assaulting me on the countertop in Australia.

MS. HEARD: Yes. That's --

MS. HEARD: It is a picture of me on the red carpet. You can see my scars. Even though I have makeup on them, they're a bit harder to cover because they're rather fresh.

MS. HEARD: Yes, we did.

MS. HEARD: Well, after Johnny was able to get clean, off of the coke and the other drugs enough to get the hand surgery he needed, there commenced a period of time of sobriety for Johnny. His doctor had fired him and then came on when Johnny agreed to get clean.

MS. HEARD: So there was this period of sobriety after that, and Johnny was committed to being clean and sober, and I thought we had finally done it. We finally did it. We were through it, and we were never going back, meaning he was going to be clean and sober for good this time, and we had a wonderful period of, you know, we fell back in love, or deeper in love than we were before, it seemed. Things were so good. We were talking about a future again. We were talking about having kids. I mean, when Johnny wasn't using it was so peaceful.

MS. HEARD: We had such a not -- we had a good time together. We went back to Australia like that, in that state, and had a few months, even had my parents come visit us in Australia. And we were talking about babies and about buying a farm and, you know, looking for homes in California. We were in a really beautiful, peaceful period. It was wonderful. It was wonderful.

MS. HEARD: We went back to a very remodeled version of that home -- I mean remodeled, very cleaned-up version of that home. Same home, same structure, but looked a bit different, as you can imagine.

MS. HEARD: You know, the home isn't the problem. You know, if you're living in domestic violence, you don't just not go home. You know, you don't just not go into the kitchen just because you were slapped in that kitchen. People living in domestic violence live in their homes. That's almost--you know, the home isn't the problem. That's the normal part of your home. And for me, you know, Johnny was my home. Where we were a couple was my home, and that home was often really violent. But it wasn't the structure itself; it was Johnny.

MS. HEARD: And when we moved back to Australia, that home, Johnny, was in a completely different -- you know, he had done a complete 180, clean, sober, present, calm. We were peaceful. I mean, any of the gripes and the problems that he seemed to have about me went away when he was sober. And so we hadn't really-- managed to go back to that same house, but in a very different way. It felt very different.

MS. HEARD: While I was in Australia, I got the call for that press tour and went to Europe for the press tour for that movie. And, you know, there was a risk because problems arise when I'm having to work, having to leave.

MS. HEARD: Yes.

MS. HEARD: Yes. That's me on the red carpet promoting the Magic Mike movie I was in. You can see the scars on my body -- on my arms.

MS. HEARD: You can't see everything, of course, but.

MS. HEARD: Yes, it does.

MS. HEARD: This is a -- you can see the scars on my arm from that attack. Also, this time, Johnny was calling me on the phone before and after, you know, while I was doing these press events, and sometimes I would be on the phone with him, kind of managing accusations about why I didn't pick up sooner, didn't text back sooner, and, sometimes I -- actually on this tour, many times, I had to delay getting out of the car or --

MS. HEARD: He was very upset with me. I just remember crying on the phone with him a lot and having to hang up to go do press events.

MS. HEARD: Yes, it was.

MS. HEARD: Yes, it was.

MS. HEARD: I believe Malcolm Connolly took this on the eastern - I mean, on the Orient Express.

MS. HEARD: I believe it was Malcolm on that trip with us, yes.

MS. HEARD: It was in 2015.

MS. HEARD: July.

MS. HEARD: Well, the train trip itself was peaceful up until Johnny wanted to start drinking brown alcohol. He had already started drinking champagne; when I returned from the press tour, that's what -- he was drinking wine and champagne. And when I -- when he wrapped on Pirates 5, the plan was for us to do this honeymoon. You know, I was walking a bit on eggshells because I know a pattern, but I was not wanting to accept that it was -- that we had gone back to a pattern at all.

MS. HEARD: And so we were on this train, and on the last night we were on the train, after this was taken, this photo, Johnny and I got in an argument about him wanting to be allowed, meaning him wanting me to agree to him drinking liquor and being okay with it. And an argument followed that in the -- in our sleeping car. Johnny slapped me across the face and held me up by the -- kind of got ahold of my neck and pushed me up against the wall of the car.

MS. HEARD: It was a small, narrow sleeper car. There was two beds, one on each side. He had me up against the wall while he was standing on the floor in between the beds, and I was on the bed, kind of half kneeling, half standing, trying to get his arms off my neck, and he was squeezing my neck against the railway car for what felt like a very long time. And every time he kind of would pull me away from the side of the car, he'd slam me up against -- slam me up against the wall. And I remember looking down at him and trying to get his arms off of my neck.

MS. HEARD: And I remember thinking that he could -- he couldn't -- not even mean to kill me. You know, I remember being scared that he wouldn't even mean to do it and kind of looking down at him, because I was slightly above him as he was standing on the ground, and kind of clawing at him, trying to get him to, you know, his arms away from my neck. I remember I had a -- at one point, he ripped the top of my shirt -- I don't remember I what it was, but I remember I had a breast exposed. At some point, I pull at his lapel of his shirt, and he rips the shirt off of him and wraps it around my neck. And that's how I woke up the next morning, actually. I woke up with it still around my neck and a giant knot in the back of my head.

MS. HEARD: Yes, I did.

MS. HEARD: I wrote about what happened that night the next morning.

MS. HEARD: Not that I saw. I have a lot of pictures from that trip, and he's uninjured.

MS. HEARD: I saw you in there earlier, whatever.

MR. DEPP: Doesn't matter.

MS. HEARD: It's fine. It's secretive, it's deceitful. You already fucking -- you got -- you had trouble with me before when you said to me that you didn't feel like you were told when I was recording you. So please stop.

MR. DEPP: You -- I -- you didn't tell me --

MS. HEARD: Please stop.

MR. DEPP: You did not tell me.

MS. HEARD: Please stop.

MR. DEPP: Fucking acknowledge what I'm saying before you keep making demands. You are not a schoolteacher.

MS. HEARD: Okay.

MS. HEARD: MR. DEPP": Shut the fuck up.

MS. HEARD: Don't tell me to shut up.

MR. DEPP: Listen to me, and then you can fucking respond. Understand?

MR. DEPP: You ain't nobody's fucking mom. You ain't no schoolteacher. Don't fucking pretend to be authoritative of me.

MS. HEARD: Okay. Fine. Leave it on.

MR. DEPP: You don't exist.

MS. HEARD: We were discussing whether or not it was all right to record each other without the other's permission, and Johnny said it didn't matter anymore, the requirement of that permission ,14 from me. I was trying to say, "Hey, we agreed."

MS. HEARD: You said August?

MS. HEARD: August 2015 was a very difficult time following the brief honeymoon we had. Johnny's use continued -- well, started again is a better, way to describe it -- and lo and behold, so did our disagreements coincidentally -- not coincidentally.

MS. HEARD: I got an offer to do a job, which was already a problem -- or problematic. I was considering working on a TV series that had James Franco in it. I was asked if I would meet with the people who were making the show.

MS. HEARD: And so I was considering taking that job, and there was a possibility it would require brief nudity, which I knew I would have to negotiate down, but obviously that was a problem for Johnny, didn't want me to do that, didn't want me to work, and frankly I needed to.

MS. HEARD: And there was another film I had coming out that I had previously shot called London Fields. It was a source of a lot of fighting between us because of the sexuality in the role, it was a constant negotiation between myself and the filmmakers. They made a film, and Johnny heard -- told me that he had heard about it, was unhappy with some of what he had heard. He was unhappy with me having done a sex scene in it that he claimed I didn't tell him about.

MS. HEARD: I did not actually film the scene he was speaking of. He demanded that we watch the -- a screener of it, which is like a version of the film before it's released. We got one sent to where we were at the time, Johnny's chateau in France; it's in a remote part of France. And once again, we're in this remote place and we're screening this film that I appeared in, and there was a scene, a sex scene, in that movie that started before -- Johnny freaked out because it looked like me. They had used a body double. Unbeknownst to me, without my permission, they used a body double to do a sex scene.

MS. HEARD: So I have an incredibly jealous man who already is upset with me for breaking the rule that I had a sex scene. On top of that, I'm telling him, "It wasn't me. I didn't shoot that scene." And you can imagine how upset he was. He was irate and was calling me a liar, a whore, among other things. And we had this -- that combined with the fact that I had even entertained doing this job that involved James Franco was a pressure cooker. I called it a week of hell later.

MS. HEARD: Johnny, at one point, slapped me in the face in our bedroom in the chateau that we were staying in. At another moment, he punched me across the jaw. At one point, he kind of either pushed or threw-- it's hard to describe to you which of those two it is because I can't tell you. I just know I went flying into this old church furniture. I later thought I had a concussion. It the first time I thought I had sustained a concussion, and that's -- I wrote about it later.

MS. HEARD: Yes. 1: :sw:s opening page, desktop. It said, "NO FUN FOR JD" in all caps.

MS. HEARD: It was a collection of pictures of me from various red carpets starting on the press tours that I had been on where it was zoomed-in pictures of what he thought was, you know, like, inappropriate clothing, side boob, cleavage anytime I moved and then -

MS. HEARD: The ones that I saw of the kind of rose gold dress and the red dress were both in that file.

MS. HEARD: Nothing.

MS. HEARD: Johnny's obviously never asked me how I got any of those scars.

MS. HEARD: Often. He did that often.

MS. HEARD: I first started - I first started - I can't tell you what I told my therapist, but - but I almost called 911 in New York in 2014, August of 2014, I believe, because I thought he had done himself an injury. He often, in fights, would cut his arms or hold a knife to his chest or superficially at first, but later, like in 2016, especially as our relationship was ending - oh, he also put cigarettes out on himself. He'd flick them at me and once or twice tried to put one out on me. But mostly he would do it while screaming at me. He once did it right in front of me, screaming at my face as he put the cigarette out on his cheek.

MR. DEPP: Do you mind? Are you sure?

MS. HEARD: I was going to pour you one.

MR. DEPP: I'm an alcoholic. Are you sure?

MS. HEARD: I don' have any control over how much you drink. But you don't have any control over whether I tell you the truth or not. O Have you changed lately? Yeah, you've changed.

MR. DEPP: Oh, your truth is really interesting, too.

MS. HEARD: Okay. Yeah. Well, I'm the first person that's --

MR. DEPP: Give me a glass of wine, please, so I can go downstairs.

MS. HEARD: Okay. Yes, your escape route; I see.

MR. DEPP: I'm not escaping. I'll be back in a few minutes.

MS. HEARD: Oh, of course. 15 minutes. Just like last time.

MR. DEPP: 15 minutes?

MS. HEARD: Just like last time, when you -- I had to pull you out of the bathroom -- well, I did not pull you out of the bathroom, but...

MR. DEPP: Bathroom? What are you I 8 talking about?

MS. HEARD: When you passed out naked ! 10 in the bathroom in there.

MR. DEPP: Did you pull me out?

MS. HEARD: I tried to.

MR. DEPP: You did?

MS. HEARD: Yeah.

MR. DEPP: Oh, did you get inside?

MS. HEARD: I didn't get inside.

MR. DEPP: Well, how did you try to pull me out?

MS. HEARD: By pounding on the door and waking you up every 15 minutes, and then falling asleep next to the door so I could hear you snore, in case that you vomited, I could call EMS if you I I j l ever stopped snoring.

MR. DEPP: Because you were afraid I was going to die.

MS. HEARD: I thought you would choke •5 on your own vomit, which is very likely with you.

MR. DEPP: Really?

MS. HEARD: Yes. Very likely. I 8

MR. DEPP: I vomit a lot?

MS. HEARD: Yes.

MR. DEPP: Do I?

MS. HEARD: Yes, you do vomit a lot. In your sleep, even more.

MR. DEPP: Really?

MS. HEARD: Oh, it's news to you? Then I this is affecting you a lot more than I thought it was.

MR. DEPP: Amber, you're so good. I hope, I hope so --

MS. HEARD: Right. You don't vomit a lot? Are you going to tell me that? Look me in the eye and tell me you don't vomit a lot. Come on, tell me. You don't vomit a lot?

MR. DEPP: Only when I'm with you.

MS. HEARD: You're always with me. At least one minute you try to --

MS. HEARD: Well, Johnny at the time was wanting to go and drink downstairs at a bar, and we were talking about 15 minutes because the last several times he had done that, it had been days. He would disappear on a bender, get really sick, and, you know the drill by now, having heard enough from me.

MS. HEARD: So another issue that we were having at the time, or that he was having at the time, that affected me is that he would pass out and vomit and vomited very, very regularly at this stage. He was obviously drinking again. I'd given up fighting with him on that at that stage, and what I had a habit of doing is turning him over onto his side so he doesn't choke on his own vomit. It's very common for people who do that to asphyxiate, at least that's what I understood, so the advice I got was turn him to his side, put a pillow underneath his back, and turn his head so that he didn't asphyxiate.

MS. HEARD: And one time I was doing that, and he swung at me and I told medical. And they- after I got their advice - I realize I can't say what the advice was, but after I got their advice I stopped doing that. I tried to, as much as I could, leave him and just be ready to call 911 or help if I heard him choking. And sometimes that happened behind bathroom doors.

MS. HEARD: And I lied.

MR. DEPP: And that you punched me in the fucking --

MS. HEARD: You're right.

MR. DEPP: Thing-- in the face.

MS. HEARD: You figured it out.

MR. DEPP: And you said, "No the fuck I --no, I didn't. What the fuck are you talking about?"

MS. HEARD: I didn't punch you.

MR. DEPP: And I watched you lie. And then I --

MS. HEARD: I didn't punch you, by the way. You -- I'm sorry that I didn't hit --

MR. DEPP: You, uh, punched me.

MS. HEARD: You across the face in a proper slap, but I was hitting you. I was not punching you. Babe, you're not punched.

MR. DEPP: Don't tell me what it feels like to be punched.

MS. HEARD: You know you've been in a l lot of fights; been around a long time. I know --

MR. DEPP: No. When you fuckin' have a Is closed fist --

MS. HEARD: You didn't get punched. You got hit. I'm sorry hit you like this. But I ,8 did not punch you. I did not fucking deck you. I fucking was hitting you.

MR. DEPP: You can't deck me.

MS. HEARD: I don't know what the full motion of my actual hand was, but you're fine. I did not hurt you. I did not punch you. I was hitting you.

MR. DEPP: How are your toes?

MS. HEARD: What am I supposed to do? Do this?

MR. DEPP: How are your toes?

MS. HEARD: I'm not sitting here bitching about it, am I? You are.

MR. DEPP: All right.

MS. HEARD: That's the difference between--

MR. DEPP: Your poor toes.

MS. HEARD: Me and you. You're a fuckin' baby.

MR. DEPP: Because you start physical fights?

MS. HEARD: You are such a baby. Grow the fuck up, Johnny.

MR. DEPP: Because start physical fights?

MS. HEARD: I didn't start a physical fight.

MR. DEPP: Yeah, you did. So I had to get the fuck out of there.

MS. HEARD: Because -- yes, you did. So you did the right thing, the big thing. You know what, you are admirable. Every single time, what's your excuse? When there's not a physical fight, then what's the excuse then?

MS. HEARD: You're still being admirable, right, just by running away? _2_2 ____________________ --.

MS. HEARD: There's two different -- there's two different situations that we're referencing in this fight, two different altercations between Johnny and I involving the door. The first of which, which we first start talking about, where I'm talking about hitting him, I'm talking about -- what that conversation is about is about the disparity, the disparity between Johnny and I in our physical fights, the disparity of how he would proactively punch me and I would have to resort to reactively hitting him.

MS. HEARD: I'm talking about the difference between a punch, which Johnny did often, and me having to hit him in my defense.

MS. HEARD: I know the difference between those two, and I'm highlighting the difference between those two. Even if he wasn't twice my size, they're very different, and that's what I'm pointing out to him.

MS. HEARD: The situation that involved, the context of that is it happened in our bedroom, up in penthouse 3 -- you've heard us talk about that place -- and I was trying to shut the door, our bedroom door, actually. I was trying to barricade myself behind this door, and Johnny was trying to get through the door. He was using his body and his limbs to try to bust through the door, and I was trying to keep it closed because I knew what he would do to me if he got to me on the other side.

MS. HEARD: And I was hitting his arms -- his arms, his body as he was trying to prevent me from closing the door.

MS. HEARD: And that is a separate incident that we later talk about in the second half of that recording where we're talking about my toes. That involved a different incident which was a bathroom door, and it was one of those ones that he was passing out in, and I could hear him passing out or what it sounded like to me behind a closed door as passing out. I heard a thud. I heard a lot of commotion. I heard a glass break, and I hear what it sounds like his body falling against the bathroom door. I open it to check on him, as I was accustomed to doing at that time. Johnny violently reacted to me opening the door, pushed it against me. It ran up over my toes, and he angrily came around the side of the door, swinging at me. I naturally pushed the door off of my feet, responding to the pain and also to the awareness, the knowledge that he was coming for me.

MS. HEARD: Johnny later denied - well, later he blamed me and his inability to understand what happened in that he was not in his right mind and he misunderstood that interaction and tried to blame me for starting a physical fight between us. And he even later went so far as to say, "I wasn't even going to hit you."

MS. HEARD: And that was the - that was the second door. I only can - I only could respond by trying to take accountability for my actions in it, what he understood my actions were, and my interpretation and what I'm trying to say to him is "Look, I can only do my best to respond. I was in pain. I was scared, and I can't promise you that when I'm scared and in pain that I won't react, thinking I know very well what our situation is and what's going to happen to me should I not react.

MS. HEARD: I can't promise you that I'll be perfect. I can't promise you I won't get physical again. God, I fuckin' sometimes get so mad I lose it. I can fuckin' promise I will do everything to change. I promise you. I'm not going to throw around divorce. I will not say divorce unless I really mean it. Unless it's it. And then, I hope you leave me. I'm not going to -- and me too. I will leave you. It's fair. I can't do it, you know.

MS. HEARD: And I think, honestly, if we hold each other accountable to that, it's fair.

MS. HEARD: That's the same conversation where I am -- as I was accustomed to doing, I'm taking as much responsibility as I had to in those interactions. I have to, you know, in my relationship with Johnny, and as you have to when somebody will not and cannot take any accountability for anything they do in a fight, as Johnny couldn't and wouldn't, I took on as much as I could for myself. You know, I had, the whole relationship, been blamed for everything: For his drinking, for him hitting me, for everything in between, blamed for walking away, blamed for staying. And I blame myself as well, blame myself for my part in it. Blame myself for staying. Blame myself for putting up with it, and frankly at a certain point, it's easier to take the blame, feels easier. It almost feels better to take the blame for something than to accept the senseless nature of the violence you can't change.

MS. HEARD: You know, it's almost more reassuring to take accountability for it than to accept the senseless nature of the violence that you can't change, no 115 matter what you do, no matter what I did. No matter what I did, he still hit me.

MS. HEARD: Johnny, they don't know. None of your friends, whether they saw a tiny fraction, that was the tip of an iceberg. A tip of an iceberg. That was my reaction to, yet, again, this happening. That is the tip of the iceberg. If you want to use that as some sort of, like, mental excuse or validation of whatever of telling your friends or whatever they think or whatever they think about me, whatever, fine. But they only saw a tip of an iceberg. None of your friends --

MR. DEPP: Let me ask you a question.

MS. HEARD: And none of this team has actually been there for one of our fights.

MR. DEPP: Oh, boy.

MS. HEARD: They've never actually seen.

MR. DEPP: That's not -- that's not true.

MS. HEARD: Really? Have they been in the hallway? Yeah.

MR. DEPP: They've heard everything.

MS. HEARD: Have they seen -- baby, that is absolutely not true. They have not heard everything.

MR. DEPP: And maybe even could fuckin' quote us.

MS. HEARD: Great. He can quote a part of it. But he has not been there. No one has actually been there for a fight in its entirety.

MR. DEPP: No. How could they?

MS. HEARD: No. Exactly. So stop using that as some sort of excuse, like they see it. They know. They work for you or they're your friends.

MS. HEARD: Johnny would often use the fact that his, you know, paid employees, his loyal staff, would back him up in fights and that they would - he would constantly threaten to call them in to validate him, threaten to call them to come into the room to have them back up him and say that it was, you know, that my yelling or that I'm at fault, that I'm in the wrong, that it's on me.

MS. HEARD: And he would do that in almost all of our fights, especially by 2015, he would call his friends and he would call his staff in to back him up so that I knew and would accept that I'm at fault and that I'm wrong. And that was, you know, what I had to agree to, over and over again, just to even hope that we could have a conversation at some point in a more therapeutic sense so we could move the conversation along. That was his MO, if you will: Call people that work for him to back him up.

MS. HEARD: Thanksgiving 2015, we had friends over. Johnny had Marilyn Manson over, and I had a few of IS my friends over. We had his son over and maybe -- maybe my father. I'm not entirely sure how long 1; he was there. We had dinner together. Johnny was disappearing with Manson, doing coke. This was --

MS. HEARD: It's what I knew of their relationship at the time.

MS. HEARD: So he got up for a longer period of time, not the normal every five minutes to go to the bathroom time, but just like he disappeared for a longer period of time. And at this stage I was really dependent on recognizing the patterns of what he was -- I was reliant on trying to figure out what he was on, what combination he was on, so I knew how to deal with him. It was incumbent, you know, on me because it affected my safety. Dealing with somebody who's really high -- dealing with Johnny high on coke and speed, meaning Adderall or some version of that, is different from the opiate Johnny which is different from the booze Johnny or a different combination, and there was quaaludes at the time that Johnny was trying to get it from --

MS. HEARD: So I wanted to know what I was dealing with. It was important to my safety to know who I was -'t

MS. HEARD: That's why I followed him.

MS. HEARD: I went upstairs to the apartment, the main apartment, not the apartment that we were celebrating Thanksgiving in, to try to figure out what was going on. And we had an argument that took place downstairs, and I said something to provoke Johnny. I went up the stairs ahead of him to get back to the party. He grabbed me at the top of the stairs, kind of through the stairs, actually, by my shirt, kind of flung me a little bit. But I just remember I went into the bedroom, kind of retreated into the bedroom, I had a glass of wine in my hand at the time which spilled everywhere and shattered, and I kind of retreated into the bedroom. Johnny came in after me, and there was this heavy, like, vintage-style glass decanter. He picked up the decanter and hurled it at my head, my face. It missed, thankfully, but smashed into a piece of art behind me on the bedroom wall above the bed.

MS. HEARD: I got past him. I think there might have been a bit of shoving. I can't really recall the sequence of when that happened, but I wanted to go back downstairs. And I passed my closet; I had to change my shirt, and I went back downstairs to the party to finish the evening out. And I put on a -- you know, a face and we finished the evening with the guests, and then more fighting happened afterwards.

MS. HEARD: Yes, it does.

MS. HEARD: Yes. It's a picture of my bruised temple. Johnny had his hand on my -- on part of my face with my face down, and he was punching my head, repeatedly punching my head. That's what caused that bruise on my temple. ,21

MS. HEARD: Yes.

MS. HEARD: After the Bahamas, Johnny's sobriety fell apart, and there was just none of it. It was - he stopped communicating with the medical I

MS. HEARD: I was there. They fired him.

MS. HEARD: Yeah. His mental health, for lack of -what it looked like, his mental health was just falling apart, what it looked like.

MS. HEARD: He was hallucinating, auditory -

MS. HEARD: He was talking to people who weren't there, meaning people who were not in the room. He was communicating with people and sounds and voices that weren't there. I know because I was sometimes in the room and sometimes on the phone with him. And he would tell me I had a conversation with him that I did not have. He would say I said something that I did not have. He would comment on somebody being in the room behind me that wasn't there.

MS. HEARD: It was terrifying. It was terrifying. Because once he smashed a board right next to my

MS. HEARD: Sorry.12

MS. HEARD: I observed behavior from him that was erratic, irrational, and didn't seem connected to the reality that we were in.

MS. HEARD: Around this time, Johnny was, again, behaving in a way that was very scary. It was . terrifying. And sometimes he didn't know --

MS. HEARD: Yes.

MS. HEARD: In these kind of discussions I would have around this time, early February of 2016, sometimes in the argument, he would accuse me of something, some person in the room with me that had just walked out or I was hiding, for instance.

MS. HEARD: And sometimes he would hold on to that, even when he seemed to have calmed down or come" eve w e e see ed to ave ca ed dow o co e off of whatever bender he was on. And it was almost as if I had to confront what he -- what delusion he had or what belief he had or what accusation he made of me in a new fight altogether. You know, sometimes he didn't make it clear to me whether he was mad at me or he knew he was mad at me. It was terrifying because I bore the brunt of it.

MS. HEARD: And at around the 8th or 9th, I got -- we were in his Sweetzer compound, the West Hollywood collection of homes that he has, and I got some cryptic texts from him in the early-morning hours that scared me. I won't say what I said, but I came over to his main house. I believe I had been across the street, and I slept on the couch.

MS. HEARD: We had some interaction in the morning which made me fearful he didn't know whether or not -- I was fearful he was going to believe that he was angry at me, even though we weren't fighting, I wasn't fighting with him. I had done nothing wrong, but I was really worried that the PLANE momentum he was on was going to click into a direction of deciding that he was mad at me and I deserved it, and I was terrified that that was going to happen so I was - I had an interaction with him and got really worried about that on the morning of the 10th.

MR. DEPP: Ah. Motherfucker. Motherfucker.

MS. HEARD: What happened? What happened?

MR. DEPP: Nothing. This bitch.

MS. HEARD: Nothing what happened this morning? You know that?

MR. DEPP: Were you in here?

MS. HEARD: No.

MR. DEPP: So then nothing happened to you this morning?

MS. HEARD: Yeah, you're right. I just woke up, and you were so sweet and nice. We were not even fighting this morning. All I did was say sorry.

MR. DEPP: Did something happen to you this morning? I don't think so.

MS. HEARD: No. That's the thing.

MR. DEPP: You want to see crazy? I'll give you fuckin' crazy. Bitch crazy. All your I crazy. And you're crazy.

MS. HEARD: Have you drunk this whole I thing this morning? . - DEPP: Oh, you got this going. You got this going.

MS. HEARD: No, I just started it.

MR. DEPP: Oh, really?

MS. HEARD: Yes.

MR. DEPP: Really? You saved that shit on me, motherfucker?

MS. HEARD: No, I didn't. You were smashing shit.

MR. DEPP: Good-bye. Ass.

MS. HEARD: Because I knew he wouldn't remember -

MS. HEARD: I was afraid. It was scary. That's scary. I was scared, scared that he wouldn't remember.

MS. HEARD: He -- at that time, we had, like, a fitting that day or the day before, and he missed it and he was kind of disappearing at that time, like, at night, vaguely saying, like, meetings, he had meetings, but then he would be gone for sometimes, like, two days and just not coming home and that sort of thing, not coming home after the bender.

MS. HEARD: And I had my -- my birthday was coming up. And on my birthday, I said, "Are you going to make it to my birthday party?" We had a dinner planned at our penthouse. I said, "It would be important for me if you made it."

MS. HEARD: And he told me at some point that day that he had scheduled a business meeting or a money meeting, I think he said, maybe, at 7, which is around the time my birthday was planned for. It might have been planned for 8 p.m.

MS. HEARD: He -- of course, once my party was starting, he wasn't there, texts me at some point to let me know he was going to make it but that he was running late, and that continued throughout my party.

MS. HEARD: We finished dinner, and when we were cleaning up and kind of everyone was delaying leaving because we were waiting for -- to give him an opportunity to show up before everyone left. And he -- he let me know he was there. You know, I tried to -- without saying what I said, I tried to give him the impression that I wasn't going to get on him about drinking or anything. I just wanted him to be there.

MS. HEARD: And we had a toast. We did a celebratory toast, and the guests left. And later that evening, we were in bed and I was -- I had a book, and Johnny effectively said, "What's your fucking problem now?" And at the time we were getting advice from a therapist. Without saying what they said, it was important for me not to make him feel attacked. So I chose my words carefully. I won't say what I said, but I remember being very careful about how I worded what I was feeling about my birthday and him having missed it. An argument followed that. I got up out of bed.

MS. HEARD: Johnny's side of the bed was closer to the door than mine. I remember him blocking the door, blocking me to get out, kind of shoving -20 me down, and we had a, you know, verbal argument, and then that became a shoving match. I hied to shove him back. I kind of felt myself retreat into the -- into the bedroom. At some point he picked up the -- like a large, I guess it's a magnum size, not magnum size, a large size bottle of champagne and hurled it at me. This time it went through a painting. And I loved this painting and I remember it just went, like, right through the canvas, left a giant hole in it. And I was thinking we shouldn't have art in our bedroom anymore.

MS. HEARD: And the fight, the argument, the fight continued into the salon area, which is outside of our bedroom at the top of the stairs. Johnny picked up my phone. I don't know why. I don't remember what he was saying when he did it, but he picked up my phone and threw it out of the open window of the salon area, out onto the street, out onto the downtown street that this window overlooked.

MS. HEARD: In that moment, I said, "Oh, no, you don't." I saw his on the countertop and picked it up and threw his immediately, like, two seconds later. I didn't want to be stranded this time alone, meaning I didn't want to be the only one stranded without a phone, which had happened to me already several times before this from Johnny. So I picked up his phone, threw it as well, and I said that I wanted to go stay somewhere else for the evening.

MS. HEARD: I left that room, went into the office. We were still screaming names at each other and screaming at each other, and I walked around the side of his desk. And the next thing I know, he has me by the hair and pulls me down, kind of. I hit the side of the desk. I remember things falling off of the side of the desk that I hit with my body. I remember trying to fight him off of me.

MS. HEARD: At some point we're back in my main bedroom and it's -- I believe I was getting my toothbrush out of that bathroom, and when I came out, we had another shoving match. But this one he kind of like got -- I remember he chest bumped me in this like "bro-y" way, chest bumped me, and I fell to the floor. When I got back up, he kind y of held me down by the shoulders down on the side of the side of the bed, kind of held me, wrestled me down on the bed.

MS. HEARD: I remember I got up once or twice ,5 before I ended up on the bed and he grabbed me, did this thing that he did some punching, to taunt me, grabbed me by the pubic bone, pubic area, and IS just, as best I can describe it is he kind of just pushed me down, held me down by it, and then kind of pulled me into it and was asking -- he was asking me, kind of taunting me, asking me if I thought I was so fucking tough. "You're just such a fucking tough guy, huh? You're so tough now? I Look who's so tough.

MS. HEARD: Do you want to be a man, tough like a man now? That happened for a -- a bit of time. I'm not quite sure. I think at some point, he left. I remember at some point shortly after that, I remember he was still in the apartment when this happened, but I remember kind of collapsing on the floor and being exhausted. I remember feeling exhausted and crying and kind of throwing in the towel, if you will. I remember saying to him, "Just can we not fight like this? Can we start over? Is there anything that we can do, like, this is really messed up, but can we just not do this, please? Can we stop doing this? Just don't leave. It's my birthday. Let's just call it couch. Let's just call a truce and not have it end like this. I don't want to have it end like this.

MS. HEARD: I'm embarrassed saying it now. He responded cruelly. He told me that's what I fucking deserved and that I'd wake up alone and no one would ever love me because all of this -- pointing to my face or body-- all of this was going to go away. No one would ever love me. When my tits sag, no one will ever love me, and I better get used to waking up alone. And he said this is all my fault and what I asked for, and he left. I heard him come back in the downstairs, you know, you can hear the door slam. I remember hearing it open and thinking, Oh, god, is this going to happen again? What's going on now? And then shortly after, I kind of peeked around to the top of the stairs where you can kind of peer into the lower level. And I just see him briefly momentarily, and he screams at me, "Happy fucking birthday," and stormed out. At some point I walked down the stairs and saw that he had also left me a note to that effect.

MS. HEARD: It was written on a piece of paper, as best I can recall, but I'm not sure.

MS. HEARD: I texted -- actually, I -- well, I can't say what I texted. I woke up that morning, the morning of my 30th birthday, and I woke up to my best friend crawling in bed with me and putting her arms around me. And I remember wondering how she got -- how she walked in because there was, like, glass on the floor. There's lots of glass.

MS. HEARD: And she put her arms around me and showed me a birthday video that all of my friends, my childhood friends, all of my loved ones, made. Of course, stupidly the first thing I asked her why Johnny wasn't in the video. Because it had been recorded before. It had been recorded sometime before, it was clear. She said that she had been asking for a few months, and Johnny --

MS. HEARD: And so I -- I packed -- eventually, we got out of my bed and grabbed a few things and got the dogs, left for our plans, which our plans had been to go to Coachella, which is a music festival that happened in California. And that had been the plan for a while, that that's how we would go I and celebrate my birthday. And I remember, you know, as I was accustomed to doing, just trying to b move through it, move on, and remember and trying '1:6 to put on a brave face and have a good time, even though it was impossible.

MS. HEARD: He was supposed to drive down, have dinner, stay in the room, maybe do some writing, or something like that in the room.

MS. HEARD: At Coachella, where we were. Coachella happens in a different part of California than we lived in. We lived in Los Angeles, and this happens about two hours, two to three hours away. So I finally got my car back, and I drove with my best friends in the car.

MS. HEARD: Johnny's dog at the time, Boo; my dog, Pistol, we shared them. They're teacup Yorkies, and I believe Raquel, my best friend's, dog which is a mutt.

MS. HEARD: She had eaten Johnny's weed when she was a puppy and had bowel control issues for her entire life, among some other issues. We regularly had to take her to the vet to try to figure out, well, what was wrong with this dog. I never met a dog that was quite like this.

MS. HEARD: So she had some control issues, hence why we would- she liked to burrow in the bed She liked to be in the, you know, by the foot of the bed underneath the covers, and it was customary that they slept in bed with us, but Boo had an issue she had We had to leave her in bed so she wouldn't be encouraged to go to the bathroom, which would happen almost immediately once you put her down on the floor, and sometimes it happened in bed too. But -- but, yeah.

MS. HEARD: Well, Raquel and I were both in that bed with the dogs, and I didn't notice anything. But we left them in the bed while we packed a bag to go to Coachella, you know, so that they didn't -- so that Boo particularly didn't lose control of her bowel -- or, you know, didn't go to the bathroom on the floor. So you leave them in bed until you're ready to take them outside to the patio, which was their designated bathroom break area.

MS. HEARD: The housekeepers were there every morning.

MS. HEARD: Or they came every day, as far as I know.

MS. HEARD: Absolutely not.

MS. HEARD: First of all, I don't think that's funny. I don't know what grown woman does. I was not also in a pranking mood. My life was falling apart. I was at a crossroads in my life that was really serious, and I had just been attacked on my 30th birthday by my violent husband with whom I was desperately in love and knew I needed to leave. It was not really a jovial time, and I don't think that's funny, period. That's

MS. HEARD: Disgusting.

MS. HEARD: No. Johnny didn't come back to that house. That was my -- that was my -- you know, he owned it, but that was my house when we were having any sort of problem. In fact, it was my house just 90 percent of the time because he just didn't come back. That was not a place that Johnny was going to be in, that Johnny was in, and he had stormed out on my birthday. And as per what we did, he would go and stay at his West Hollywood home, and I would stay at the downtown places.

MS. HEARD: He wasn't going to come back to the -- !

MS. HEARD: I drove.

MS. HEARD: My sister; my friend, Savannah, I believe; my best friend, Raquel; just my - my girlfriends that I- I typically surround myself with my girlfriends. That's my support.

MS. HEARD: He picked us up from Coachella in the evening when we, as a group, all were ready to leave. That was the day that we went, which was a - which was the day that I took MDMA and mushrooms at the same time, realized very shortly after what a horrible idea that was, considering the state that my life was in. I highly don't recommend that combination at the time. So I didn't feel like being in a crowd I didn't feel like being at Coachella. I had intended to try to have a good time despite what was going on in my personal life, and I realized that that was just not going to happen.

MS. HEARD: And so I wanted to go home meaning be in a bed I wanted to be you know I just wanted to be held by my best friend and watch a wanted to be held by my best friend and watch a movie and that's what we did I didn't feel well and wanted to leave

MS. HEARD: When we left Coachella, it was my entire group. I wasn't ever alone with Starling. I certainly wasn't anywhere near him. I didn't have a conversation with him. I sat in the very back seat with my best friend next to me, and it was a whole group of us.

COURT BAILIFF: All rise.

COURT BAILIFF: All rise. Please be seated and come to order.

MS. HEARD: I had no physical contact with him.

MS. HEARD: It's arguably the biggest fashion kind of celebrity event, red carpet event, of the year. It happens every year in New York City.

MS. HEARD: I was invited. Typically designers will invite people in the public eye to be their, p p p y , you know, guests, and they ill typically dress them. And it's a way for designers or fashion to kind of intersect with a celebrity world, and it's a big event held at the museum every year.

MS. HEARD: Well, Johnny and I were -- we were dressed by Ralph Lauren, guests of Ralph Lauren, and Johnny missed the fitting because it was happening around the date of my birthday party in Los Angeles, but we were planning on going together as Ralph Lauren's guests.

MS. HEARD: I did. I didn't have a phone at the time because I couldn't get it reinstated after Johnny threw it out of the window because no one on his team would respond to me, so I had no way to kind of reinstall it ahead. No point in getting a burner phone if you don't know anyone's phone number. So I wasn't sure, really, what was going on or when he would show up or if he would show up. No one would talk to me on his team. No.

MS. HEARD: So I end up going by myself. Frankly, I wasn't sure if he'd show up, you know, on the carpet or if he'd show up at the hotel shortly before. I had no way of knowing.

MS. HEARD: I did. I got out of the car and walked the red carpet by myself, escorted by somebody from Ralph Lauren's team, and I sat next to an empty place setting for Johnny that they cleared as soon as we realized that he wasn't- that he had effectively stood me up on the carpet

MS. HEARD: I was standing in line right in front of a gentleman. It was Elon. I didn't recognize him until we started talking and he had reminded me that we had met once before. He was with his mother.

MS. HEARD: We did. As I mentioned, we spoke on 1, , p I It the red carpet, kind of on the waiting - in the waiting line of the carpet. He seemed like a real gentleman. He was really nice. And he sat next to me - well not next to me. He sat kind of in a Is nearby table. We got to speaking that night, and then eventually became friends.

MS. HEARD: Yes, I do.

MS. HEARD: A I don't recall even being in LA at that time.

MS. HEARD: I don't recall. I believe I was in London at the time.

MS. HEARD: Not around that date. It seems like it's a wrong date.

MS. HEARD: No. I did that at the Coachella music festival, and that was the end of that. I learned the hard way that that was a terrible idea.