Madly In Love To Mud-Slinging: A Timeline Of Johnny Depp & Amber Heard’s Volatile Relationship

Once they made for a quintessential A-lister couple of Hollywood who would give goals to fans and peers alike. It was four years ago, when their marriage hit the roof and took an ugly turn. It made for a mud-slinging fest which left many jaws on the floor.?

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It hit another low when Amber accused Depp of physical and mental abuse, which he vehemently denied. Four years after their divorce, this duo locked horns at a public legal battle.?

New details have emerged in Johnny Depp-Amber Heard’s much publicized libel case. According to details revealed in the court during the actor’s defamation lawsuit against The Sun, The Hollywood Reporter, in its detailed feature, has chronicled details from the 132-page ruling from Justice Andew Nicol.?

According to the same, Depp had texted his sister Christi Dembrowski, a movie producer with some influence at Warner Bros, to get Amber Heard axed from Aquaman.

“I want her replaced on the WB film,” the message read, which Depp admitted he sent while in court.?

In the 2 November ruling, Justice Nicol sided with Heard over claims that Depp had assaulted her on multiple occasions, and made her fear for her life, calling the article in question 'substantially true'.

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The ruling might not have come out in his favour but Depp hasn’t given up yet. He is heading to the U.K. Court Of Appeal in a bid to overturn a High Court verdict last month which was in favour of The Sun that described him as a “wife-beater.

As per an application with the Court Of Appeal, spotted by Press Association, Johnny Depp will continue a legal wrangle.?

While it’s too soon to pick a side, most people stand neutral in this regard and are following every update that has been coming out. Here’s a timeline of their relationship:

2009

Depp and Heard first caught each other’s fancy on the sets of The Rum Diary, in which they played each other’s love interests. Soon after, this duo had a whirlwind love affair.

2012

Almost three years after their first movie collaboration, Johnny and Amber started dating officially soon after Depp’s split with Vanessa Paradis, who was his partner of 14 years and the mother of his children. In an interview with Rolling Stone, he had said spoken about his split with Paradis,?

‘The last couple years have been a bit bumpy… At times, certainly unpleasant, but that’s the nature of breakups, I guess, especially when there are kiddies involved.’

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Vanessa and Johnny together had Lily-Rose Depp, 21, and John Christopher Depp III, 18.

After being tight-lipped about Amber, he made his relationship public with their first official appearance at the Heaven Gala in 2014.

2014

It didn’t take them long to announce their engagement, once they made their relationship public. A source cited by People Magazine revealed,?

‘Of course, they couldn’t be happier to be engaged and excited to share the rest of their lives together. Amber has really taken well to the kids and really enjoys spending time with them. And she’s even taken Lily shopping on her own for some bonding time.’

2015

Johnny Depp and Amber Heard entered holy matrimony on the private island of the actor in the Bahamas on February 5, 2015. It was an intimate and private ceremony attended by only close friends and relatives.?

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The newly wedded bliss didn’t last long as trouble started brewing soon after they got hitched. According to a report by Variety, Depp suffered a hand injury while filming Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales in Australia. Depp reportedly received the injury during an argument with Heard.

According to reports, Depp got into an argument with his then wife Amber and ended up smashing bottles, windows and other glass items around their house. This resulted in slicing off a portion of one of his fingers. Instead of immediately seeking medical attention for his finger, Depp allegedly stuck the stump in a can of paint and used it to write “Billy Bob” and “Easy Amber” on a mirror, referring to Depp’s accusations that Heard cheated on him with her London Fields co-star Billy Bob Thornton.

2016

15 months after they tied the knot, the couple headed for divorce.? According to Vanity Fair, Heard cited ‘irreconcilable differences’ while filing for divorce. Following this, Amber Heard also filed a temporary restraining order against Depp, forbidding the actor to go within 100 yards of her.

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The divorce was settled almost immediately after reaching a $7 million settlement, which Heard went on to donate to the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and the American Civil Liberties Union.

2017 - 2018

Johnny and Amber went their separate ways and it seemed like things got over for the better. Turned out it was just a lull before the raging storm. Unbeknownst to many, Heard was romantically involved with Billionaire and founder of Tesla and SpaceX Elon Musk. Their affair was short lived and in August 2017, Amber shared on social media that the couple had broken up but would “remain close.”

Amber then stirred a storm when she wrote an op-ed piece for The Washington Post titled?

‘I Spoke Up Against Sexual Violence — And Faced Our Culture’s Wrath. That Has To Change.’

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In this piece, she wrote about receiving death threats and her career taking a big hit. However, she never mentioned Johnny Depp directly while detailing her harrowing experiences of abuse. It didn’t take long for people to interpret her piece as being in reference to him because of the wide media coverage of their split.?

“Two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out. Friends and advisers told me I would never again work as an actress — that I would be blacklisted. A movie I was attached to recast my role. I had just shot a two-year campaign as the face of a global fashion brand, and the company dropped me. .?.?. I had the rare vantage point of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse, ” she wrote.

2019

After her op-ed got enough limelight and virality, Depp filed a $50 million lawsuit against Heard for defamation, arguing that the claims she made were ‘categorically false’, and that the op-ed was written to ‘generate positive publicity for Heard and advance her career’.

Depp’s lawyers stated in the complaint that the op-ed “depended on the central premise that Ms. Heard was a domestic abuse victim and that Mr. Depp perpetrated domestic violence against her,” a premise they described as “categorically false.”?

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They argued that Heard was the one who had actually abused Depp, referring to an incident she previously referred to as self-defense. Depp also blamed Heard and her op-ed for Disney dropping him from the Pirates franchise four days after it was published.??

Depp's legal team also suggested that the op-ed was released to promote Heard’s film Aquaman which was released just three days after the piece was published.

In her motion to dismiss, Heard stated a declaration citing that Depp began to hit her about a year into their relationship, when she began to witness him “abusing drugs and alcohol or would notice that he was drunk or high.” She detailed more than a dozen instances of alleged abuse, ranging from late 2012 to the May 2016 incident that directly preceded the divorce filing. She sometimes referred to Depp as “the Monster.”

2020

This year in February, Depp attended a preliminary hearing for the libel trial at the High Court in London. In this trial, the text messages that Depp sent to actor Paul Bettany in 2013 were read out. One of them said, ‘Let’s burn Amber.’ Another read: ‘Let’s drown her before we burn her!!! I will f*** her burnt corpse afterwards to make sure she is dead.’?

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The 3-week hearing for Johnny’s libel case against The Sun is underway in London. The 57-year-old actor is suing the tabloid’s publisher News Group Newspapers (NGN) over an article which called him a “wife beater” which he strenuously denies. Here is everything that we know so far:

1. Amber Heard’s diary entry was read aloud in the court which described their alleged terrible fight on a train during their honeymoon. According to Press Association, Heard wrote: “Our fight was terrible. Johnny… at one point found himself with his shirt wrapped around my neck. Amazing to think about (the) precision, co-ordination that required considering the close circumstances… I don’t even know how I wound up with this huge, rather annoying knot on the back of my head. F*ck, I hate that.” She added: “We finally fell asleep with one another smashed together in desperate, childlike anger, fear and love.”

2. Shedding light on the accident where he lost his finger tip, Johnny Depp’s bodyguard told the trial court that one of the first things Depp said to him as they stood outside a rental property before going to hospital was: “She’s just cut my finger off.” When asked if he had ever seen or heard Johnny raising his hand on Amber, he insisted that it never happened, he said, “I would not tolerate any man striking a woman. No matter who he is. Not even if he is my boss. Not even if he is the pope.”

3. According to Depp, the couple separated after an argument that followed Heard’s 30th birthday party in April 2016. He had attended a meeting before the party began because he had been told that his former business managers had “stolen my money.” Asked how much was stolen, Depp said “this is a ludicrous amount to have to state, it’s quite embarrassing — apparently I had made $650 million,” much of it through his involvement with the Pirates of the Caribbean films. In addition to losing 650 million dollars, Depp was “$100 million in the hole because I had not paid the government my taxes for 17 years.”

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Once the party got over, he went to bed and Heard accused him of ruining her birthday dinner before throwing a “haymaker” at him.?“A haymaker is a type of a wild swing, a roundhouse punch … effective if it reaches the target,” Depp said.

As per court documents, details of sex scenes Amber Heard was to play on screen were kept from her husband, Johnny Depp. The Pirates of the Caribbean star, who admitted to having jealous feelings, told the judge hearing his London libel case against the Sun that he “was uncomfortable with the idea of her doing nudity”.

When Asked whether he interfered with his wife’s film contracts, Depp replied: “She was upset that she was being objectified and she wanted to do deeper material, more profound, something where she could show her abilities as an actress.”

4. Johnny Depp's former estate manager told the High Court how he found a piece of the actor's finger following a now infamous argument with Amber Heard in Australia.

5. Depp’s former staffer Ben King’s written statement said that he never saw the actor "be violent or unkind towards Ms Heard, or indeed towards anyone else".

6. On the fiasco when Depp allegedly found poop in his bed in 2016, Kevin Murphy, the house manager, told court that Amber Heard told him that it was?"a harmless prank".

7.??Alejandro Romero, a concierge at the Los Angeles building where Johnny Depp and Amber Heard lived, testified that tech billionaire Elon Musk visited Heard “regularly late at night” from March 2015, while she was married to Depp. Heard and the Tesla founder had a relationship after she and Depp separated.

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“From March 2015 onwards, Ms Heard was visited regularly late at night, at around 11pm to midnight, by Mr Elon Musk. For his initial visits, I would receive a call from Ms Heard who would tell me to give Mr Musk access to the garage for the building and then send him up to the penthouse,” the statement read, as per Deadline. “After he had made a few visits, Ms Heard provided Mr Musk with his own garage remote and a fob to Mr Depp’s penthouse. I believe he visited Ms Heard a few times a week and he would always visit when Mr Depp was not at home.”

8.? As per a report by BBC,?Depp’s former girlfriend, Winona Ryder who was in a relationship with him for over four years said in a video testimony,?

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"I understand that it is very important that I speak from my own experience, as I obviously was not there during his marriage to Amber, but, from my experience, which was so wildly different, I was absolutely shocked, confused and upset when I heard the accusations against him.

"The idea that he is an incredibly violent person is the farthest thing from the Johnny I knew and loved.

"I cannot wrap my head around these accusations. He was never, never violent towards me. He was never, never abusive at all towards me. He has never been violent or abusive towards anybody I have seen."

9.??In her witness statement, musician, actress and model Vanessa Paradis said she had known Mr Depp for more than 25 years - including 14 years when they were partners and raised their two children together.

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"Through all these years I've known Johnny to be a kind, attentive, generous and non-violent person and father," she said according to a BBC Report.

"I have seen that these outrageous statements have been really distressing, and also caused damage to his career because unfortunately people have gone on believing these false facts," she further added.

The trial of Johnny Depp's libel case is underway and this week will see Amber Heard taking the stand and testifying her claims.?