Johnny Depp was jealous, controlling, and frequently drunk, his ex-girlfriend and actress Ellen Barkin said, in prerecorded testimony Thursday in the actor’s defamation lawsuit trial against his ex-wife Amber Heard.

Heard (36), who in May 2016 requested an approach restraining order against Depp (58) alleging domestic violence before filing for divorce, wrote an opinion piece for The Washington Post in December 2018 in which she described herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse”, without mentioning her former husband.

The protagonist of “Pirates of the Caribbean” sued her for 50 million in damages for implying that he was an abuser. The actress from the state of Texas (south) and star of “Aquaman” filed a countersuit for 100 million dollars, alleging that she suffered “physical violence and rampant abuse” by her ex-husband. During the four days of his testimony, Depp denied hitting Heard and claimed that she was the one who was frequently violent.

Ex-partner of the actor tells his experience

Barkin, 68, said he had a brief “sexual relationship” with the actor in the 1990s. Barkin noted that during the several months they were together, Depp “was drunk most of the time.” “He’s a jealous, controlling man: ‘Where are you going? Who are you going with? What did you do last night?'” she added.

“Once he got outraged because he had a scratch on his back and insisted it was because I had sex with someone other than him,” she said. Barkin recounted an incident during the filming of the 1998 film “Panic and Madness in Las Vegas” in which Depp “threw a bottle of wine across the hotel room … I don’t know why he threw the bottle “, although he indicated that he may have had an argument with friends or with his assistant.

Depp’s bad reputation

Tracey Jacobs, Depp’s former agent who also gave recorded testimony, said the “Pirates of the Caribbean” star’s reputation began to decline after 2010 due to his “unprofessional behavior.” Depp’s lawyers allege that his ex-wife’s domestic abuse allegations damaged their client’s reputation, but his former agent maintained that the actor had already begun to decline before that. Jacobs stated that Depp’s “unprofessional behavior” included drug and alcohol use as well as “consistently being late to set in virtually every film”.

“The production crews don’t like to wait for hours and hours and hours for the star to show up,” he explained. “It’s a small community and it made people reluctant to come to him towards the end,” she said. He alleged that Depp was in such “financial desperation” in January 2016 that he went to the agency asking for $20 million. She alleged that she and her associates told him that her firm was “not a bank” even though they helped him obtain a loan through Bank of America. For his part, Josh Mandel, Depp’s manager, said he was “extremely concerned” about the actor’s financial situation in 2015.

There was “constant” talk of him cutting his spending, but “that never happened,” he added.
“Over time it became clear that there were problems with alcohol and drugs” and “that translated into more erratic behavior,” she detailed. At one point, Depp was spending $300,000 a month on full-time staff and another $100,000 a month on a doctor and nurses to ensure his sobriety, he said. Mandel estimated that Depp earned around $600 million over the decades that he represented him.
Three-time Oscar nominee, the actor fired Mandel in 2016, who filed a lawsuit, although the two settled in 2018.

He also fired Jacobs, who said he didn’t know why: “I don’t know. All I know is that he ended up with pretty much everyone in his life.” Depp’s lawyers brought experts to the stand who testified that the actor lost millions due to domestic abuse allegations, including $22.5 million for a sixth installment of “Pirates.” Depp filed the defamation complaint in the United States after losing a case in London in November 2020, also for defamation, against the tabloid newspaper The Sun, which called him a “wife-beater”. Heard and Depp met in 2009 on the set of “The Rum Diary” and married in February 2015. Their divorce was finalized two years later. Judge Penney Azcarate scheduled closing arguments in the case for May 27, after which the jury will deliberate.