In her new memoir, the actress offered details of her turbulent courtship with the Hollywood star when they were both in their twenties.
"We ate, we talked, we drank Jack Daniel's, we laughed out loud, we had smoke breaks midway... He was ridiculously beautiful, surprisingly open, funny, quirky and sweet," Gray recalled.
Just two weeks after that meeting, the actor proposed to her.
Over time, according to the actress's account, Depp's behavior
became erratic. “Johnny was traveling every week from Vancouver, but he was
starting to get into trouble more and more often: fights in bars, arguments
with the police...”.
"He started missing his flights to Los Angeles because he fell
asleep or, when he came home, he was like crazy jealous and paranoid about
what I had done while he was gone," she continued in her book. . “I
attributed his bad mood and his unhappiness to him feeling miserable and
powerless not being able to leave the 21 Jump Street series,” she
explained.
“As his growing heartthrob status accelerated, he felt
exploited and trapped in this teen idol machine, hounded by paparazzi and
crazed fans,” he confessed.
The actress decided to end the engagement after nine months.
According to Grey, life after Depp was going well until she
found out that Winona Ryder was with him. “That was until I found out my
dear neighbor was banging my ex,” she noted.
The actress said her
anguish was overwhelming, but she noted that much of it had nothing to do
with her ex's new love interest. "It was just the face of pain at the time,"
she noted.
Johnny Depp's agent testified Monday that his
ex-wife's 2018 Washington Post op-ed, in which she described herself as a
victim of domestic abuse, was "catastrophic" for the actor's career and
coincided with the loss of a $23 million deal for a "Pirates of the
Caribbean" sequel.
Amber Heard's lawyers vehemently rejected such
a claim, suggesting the article was inconsequential amid a flood of bad
publicity for Depp caused by his own misbehavior.
Depp is suing Heard for defamation in a court in Fairfax, Virginia, arguing that her article defamed him when the actress described herself as "a public figure representing domestic abuse." The article never mentions Depp by name, but Depp's lawyers say she defamed him anyway because it was a clear reference to the abuse allegations Heard brought against her in 2016.
In his statement Monday, agent Jack Whigham said Depp was still
able to work after those initial allegations. He received $8 million for
"City Of Lies," $10 million for "Murder on the Orient Express," and $13.5
million for "Fantastic Beasts." : The Crimes of Grindelwald” (“Fantastic
Animals: The Crimes of Grindelwald”), all filmed in 2017, although under
contracts reached before the accusations.
But the Washington Post
article, he said, was especially damaging to his career: "It was an
extremely shocking first-person account," Whigham said.
After that, he said that Depp had trouble getting any kind of job. He had to take a pay cut — to $3 million — to make the independent movie “Minimata,” and a $22.5 million verbal agreement he had with Disney for a sixth “Pirates” movie was scuppered. Whighham said.
However, on cross-examination, Heard's attorneys asked if the "Pirates" deal had already gone downhill by the time Heard's article was published. Whigham acknowledged that he never had a written agreement for Depp to appear in a sixth installment. And while he said the film's producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, spoke favorably throughout 2018 about Depp's return to the franchise, Disney executives were noncommittal at best.
In early 2019, weeks after Heard's article was published, Whigham said it was clear that Depp's role in any "Pirates" movie had been thwarted and that insteadbio, the producers were looking to move forward with Margot Robbie in a lead role.
Heard's attorneys have cited a variety of factors, including reports of drug and alcohol abuse, a lawsuit from a crew member in July 2018 that Depp hit him on set, and a separate defamation lawsuit that Depp filed against a British newspaper in 2018, as things that damaged Depp's image more than the Post article.
For Depp's lawsuit in Virginia to succeed, the actor must not only prove that he was falsely accused, but that the op-ed, not Heard's 2016 abuse allegations when he filed for divorce and obtained a temporary restraining order, is what caused the damage.
Depp's lawyers also presented testimony from an intellectual property expert who testified about the negative spin on Depp's reputation. But his own data, which included Google search trends, showed negative spikes after the 2016 abuse allegations, but negligible or no changes after the article was published.
The trial entered its fourth week Monday. Much of the testimony
during the first three focused on the volatile relationship between Depp and
Heard. The actor says that he never hit Heard; her lawyers, that Depp
physically and sexually abused the actress on multiple occasions.
