Amber Heard, Johnny Depp: A timeline of accusations

Amber Heard and Johnny Depp’s legal battle is raging on, with accusations flying in from each actor. This, as part of Depp’s libel case against The Sun newspaper, which began this month in High Court in London, after Depp filed a case against the publication over calling him a “wife beater”.

While it’s become hard to keep track of who said what, we breakdown a timeline of the accusations up until today. Heard has submitted evidence of 14 separate occasions where she claims ex-husband Depp had used violence against her.

On July 21, after taking the witness stand, Heard claimed that Depp “explicitly threatened to kill” her “many times”. She claims that she suffered a “three-day hostage situation” in 2015, while visiting Depp in Australia during the filming of ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’, where she says her ex-husband had been on an alcohol and drug binge.

She said that Depp had grabbed her neck, thrown her against a fridge and torn off her nightgown, amongst other things. “It is the worst thing I have ever been through. I was left with an injured lip and nose, and cuts on my arms,” she said.

34-year-old Heard on July 7 claimed that Depp, 57, created a “third party” called “the monster” to blame for any instances of alleged domestic abuse, which he attributed to “illness”.

In court yesterday, Heard confessed to punching Depp but said it was to protect her sister, as she feared that Depp would throw her down the stairs. Heard claimed that Depp had done the same thing to his ex-girlfriend, model Kate Moss; the incident involving Heard's younger sister, Whitney, allegedly took place in 2015, at the couple’s penthouse in Los Angeles. “I had heard that he had pushed a former girlfriend, I think it was Kate Moss, down the stairs. And I thought of that at the moment and I reacted in defence of [Whitney],” said Heard.

But how and when did the two actors meet? Depp and Heard first met in 2009 on the set of ‘The Rum Diary’. They began to date in 2012. Heard alleged that Depp assaulted her for the first time on March 8, 2013, and tried to set fire to a painting gifted to her by her ex.

In 2015, they married. In 2016, Heard alleged that Depp had thrown a bottle of champagne at the wall and threw her to the floor. She applied for a restraining order against Depp. They dissolved their marriage that year. Also in 2016, a video surfaced where Depp allegedly threw a wine glass at Heard. By 2017, their divorce was final.

In 2018, Depp began to retaliate. He filed a libel claim against The Sun for referring to him as a “wife beater”. In 2019, he filed a libel claim against Heard, for an op-ed in the Washington Post, which didn’t mention Depp by name, but which Depp said cost him his role in the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ reboot.

Depp began to claim that Heard had abused him. He claimed that Heard put out a cigarette on his face and severed his finger on a glass bottle. A photo emerged showing Depp on a stretcher with a bloody and bandaged hand.

On the first day of Depp’s libel case on July 7, 2020, Depp was asked about the video incident that emerged in 2016, and claimed: “I was violent with some cupboards.” Barrister Sasha Wass QC told the actor: “We see you now, very charming and polite and very softly-spoken, but there is another side of you, isn’t there, that is less charming?” Depp’s response was: “I’m afraid that would not be for me to judge.”