Johnny Depp joked about the public interest in his high-profile split from Amber Heard and their subsequent legal battles.
During the San Sebastian Film Festival on Tuesday, September 24, Depp, 61, compared his second directorial feature, Modi, about Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani, to his own life.
“Each [character] has their story because I’m sure we can say that I’ve been through a number of things here and there,” he said during a panel in footage shared by The Hollywood Reporter. “Maybe yours didn’t turn into a soap opera. I mean, literally, televised.”
Depp’s quip received laughter from the audience.
“But we all go through what we go through. So to see these people on the verge of earning their stripes,” he continued. “There’s something beautiful to me about those days living in a tiny studio apartment just off Hollywood Boulevard in a dangerous neighborhood. They were tough. They were rough, ugly; they were weird, all kinds of stuff, but they were beautiful.”
Depp and Heard, 38, were married for two years before calling it quits in 2017. Heard subsequently filed for divorce and obtained a temporary restraining order after she accused Depp of domestic violence.
The actor, who has denied her claims, sued the U.K. newspaper The Sun after they referred to him as a “wife beater” in a 2018 article. He ultimately lost his overseas case two years later while taking Heard to court in the U.S. after she wrote a Washington Post op-ed about her history with abuse.
Depp claimed Heard’s article negatively impacted his career even though he was not named in the piece. Meanwhile, Heard argued that she lost out on jobs following their split due to their messy legal battles.
A jury ultimately ruled in favor of Depp after several weeks of testimonies in June 2022. The judge announced that Depp would be awarded $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages. Heard, for her part, was awarded $2 million in compensatory damages and no punitive damages for her counterclaim.
The actress, who is now living in Spain with her 3-year-old daughter, Oonagh, only had to pay $10.35 million after the judge reduced the amount due to a Virginia law capping punitive damages.
Depp released a statement after the hearing to address his reaction. “From the very beginning, the goal of bringing this case was to reveal the truth, regardless of the outcome,” he told Us Weekly. “Speaking the truth was something that I owed to my children and to all those who have remained steadfast in their support of me. I feel at peace knowing I have finally accomplished that.”
Depp said he felt “overwhelmed” by the “outpouring of love and the colossal support and kindness” that he received amid the legal proceedings. “I also hope that the position will now return to innocent until proven guilty, both within the courts and in the media,” he added.
Heard settled the Virginia defamation lawsuit in December 2022.
“After a great deal of deliberation I have made a very difficult decision to settle the defamation case brought against me by my ex-husband in Virginia,” she wrote in an Instagram statement at the time. “It’s important for me to say that I never chose this. I defended my truth and in doing so my life as I knew it was destroyed.”
She continued: “The vilification I have faced on social media is an amplified version of the ways in which women are re-victimized when they come forward. Now I finally have an opportunity to emancipate myself from something I attempted to leave over six years ago and on terms I can agree to. I have made no admission. This is not an act of concession. There are no restrictions or gags with respect to my voice moving forward.”
Heard reflected on how she “lost faith in the American legal system” while comparing her different experiences in U.K. and U.S. courts. She claimed that “abundant, direct evidence that corroborated my testimony was excluded” from the Virginia trial.
“In the interim I was exposed to a type of humiliation that I simply cannot re-live,” she concluded. “Even if my US appeal is successful, the best outcome would be a re-trial where a new jury would have to consider the evidence again. I simply cannot go through that a third time.”
