Hollywood Vampires is the sensational new book that chronicles Johnny Depp and Amber Heard‘s toxic union.
Today, in the final part of our gripping series, we chart the bitter unravelling of their marriage – and how Amber’s transformation into a #MeToo icon would set the stage for one of the most explosive celebrity trials of the decade.
On Monday May 23, 2016, three days after Johnny Depp’s mother died, Amber Heard quietly filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences. After just 15 months, their turbulent marriage was at an end.
The next day, her lawyer sent to his lawyer what would become known among Johnny’s friends as ‘the extortion letter’.
Amber stated that Johnny had been violent toward her three times. ‘Although Amber is afraid of Johnny, she strongly insists that we do everything possible to keep this matter out of the media spotlight,’ the letter read, explaining that this was why she had not yet sought a restraining order.
It listed Amber’s immediate requests: appropriate temporary alimony (eventually requested at $50,000 a month); exclusive use and possession of a black Range Rover owned by Johnny; exclusive use and possession of three of his five downtown LA penthouses where she and several of her friends were living (rent-free); and a contribution to Amber’s legal fees in the amount of $100,000, plus $25,000 for ‘forensic accounting costs’, to be paid by Friday.
While the letter was on its way, Amber was frantically trying to reach Johnny, who was in New York, begging him to call her, texting him ‘please’ over and over again, and ’emergency’ and ‘I’m dying’.
That night, having not made contact, Amber sent a further text. ‘We can take as long or quick as we want. And do this or undo this as we see fit. You and I have the control. And love each other.’
Hollywood Vampires is the sensational new book that chronicles Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s toxic union. Pictured: Amber and Johnny in 2011
Today, in the final part of our gripping series, we chart the bitter unravelling of their marriage – and how Amber’s transformation into a #MeToo icon would set the stage for one of the most explosive celebrity trials of the decade. Pictured: Amber testifies in court after Johnny sued her for libel in 2018
On Monday May 23, 2016, three days after Johnny Depp’s mother died, Amber Heard quietly filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences. After just 15 months, their turbulent marriage was at an end. Pictured: Johnny earlier this month
She ended with: ‘I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you. I have nothing but love for you.’
She was suggesting she could ‘undo’ the legal wheels she’d set in motion. But while she was declaring love for Johnny, Amber was also collecting evidence.
On Wednesday, Johnny filed his response, rejecting all of Amber’s requests for spousal support. Within hours, countless media outlets, from Page Six to Vanity Fair and the BBC, were breaking the news of the divorce.
On May 27, Amber filed for a temporary restraining order. She presented the court with multiple photos documenting injuries to her cheek and eye area from a fight at her apartment which had ended with the police being called.
In a sworn declaration she said: ‘During the entirety of our relationship, Johnny has been verbally and physically abusive to me… which has included angry, hostile, humiliating and threatening assaults to me whenever I questioned his authority or disagreed with him.’
She added that she was scared: ‘As Johnny’s paranoia, delusions and aggression increased throughout our relationship so has my awareness of his continued substance abuse.
‘Because of this, I am extremely afraid of Johnny and for my safety. I am petrified he will return at any moment to the Broadway residence, to which he has full access to despite my repeated pleas to his security team to prevent otherwise and to protect me.’
Later that day, TMZ, a celebrity news website, splashed with the headline: ‘Amber Heard Claims Domestic Violence, Gets Restraining Order Against Johnny Depp.’
In A&E, Johnny (pictured), still wearing his sunglasses, lay on a stretcher, his bloody finger wrapped in a green napkin laid on top of a large fabric pad
Her allegations of domestic violence were now out in the world.
A few days later, People magazine hit the newsstands with an explosive cover story featuring exclusive photos of Amber’s injuries. ‘Inside Their Toxic Marriage,’ the headline read.
The cover showed a pale and forlorn Amber with discolouration under her eyes and a lesion on her lower lip. The photo was credited to a friend of Amber’s and dated from December 2015.
Bruce Witkin, who was on tour in Denmark with Johnny and their band, the Hollywood Vampires, at the time, remembered the moment they saw the story. ‘We’re on the road. You know, he was freaked out. And I’m like, “What is this?”
Bruce thought it looked suspicious. ‘Do I think they both hit each other? Yeah. But do I think it was to the extent that she said? Absolutely not.’
Johnny later said he ‘felt ill’ when the People story dropped.
‘I felt sick in the sense there was no truth to it. There was no truth in it whatsoever… Then you notice people looking at you differently. And then you notice calls stop coming from agents and producers.’
He’d finish a show and then go to the back of the tour bus: ‘I just sat in the back of the bus and cried.’
Johnny (pictured with Amber in 2015) later said he ‘felt ill’ when the People story dropped
The following week, on June 7, 2016, TMZ published another shocking story – this time about Amber and the girlfriend she had been seeing when she first met Johnny, Tasya van Ree.
‘Amber Heard Arrested for Domestic Violence Against Girlfriend,’ the headline read. In 2009, the same year she met Johnny, a police officer had seen Amber and Tasya arguing, then Amber had lunged at Tasya’s neck as if she was going to choke her. No charges ensued but the case remained on file for two years. It had never before been made public.
Despite having got a restraining order against him, Amber kept pleading with Johnny for a meeting. Eventually, against the advice of his friends, he agreed. His bodyguard, Malcolm, believed he was being ‘set up’.
Bruce Witkin insisted on sitting nearby until the early hours of the morning, ready to intervene if things got too heated.
She secretly recorded their conversation on her phone. At one point, she told Johnny she just wanted to touch him. ‘After all the s*** you f***ing accused me of? You wanna touch me? You’re f***ing nuts,’ he said.
Amber cried and told Johnny she didn’t want things to end badly. She tried to take his sunglasses off to see his eyes.
‘Don’t take my f***ing glasses off,’ he spat. ‘You will not see my eyes again.’
There were revealing moments in the recording that demonstrated a more honest side to their relationship: that they emotionally tortured one another, and that Amber had hit Johnny more than once.
The following week, on June 7, 2016, TMZ published another shocking story – this time about Amber and the girlfriend she had been seeing when she first met Johnny, Tasya van Ree. Pictured: Amber and Johnny in 2015
Johnny reminded her why he left her on her 30th birthday, because she ‘haymakered him’ and ‘came around the bed and was punching’ him.
Later, Amber would say she didn’t deny this in the moment because she was ‘not having that conversation with Johnny’ and just wanted to get out of the room.
‘Booze does not make me crazy. Drugs do not make me crazy,’ Johnny told her. ‘Here’s the deal. You make me crazy.’
At one point, he pulled out a knife and threatened to cut himself. It was the turquoise-handled knife that Amber had given him as a birthday gift.
‘Want to cut me somewhere?’ Johnny asked Amber. ‘Please do not cut yourself,’ she pleaded, begging him to ‘put the knife down.’
Enough dirty linen had been aired: three months later, after much wrangling, the warring parties reached agreement.
The dissolution of their brief marriage would result in three phonebook-sized volumes of family law records. Amber was awarded $7million (£5.2million).
She said she would donate the entire amount to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, a promise she did not fulfil. Johnny retained all of his properties. Amber would keep their dogs, Pistol and Boo, and the horse, Arrow, that he had given her. Neither would receive spousal support.
In private, Amber had been vocal about the fact that she believed her career and reputation had suffered because she went public as the abuse victim of an ultra-famous and beloved star. Pictured: Amber and Johnny in 2011
A confidentiality agreement barred them from ever discussing the details of the divorce publicly. They released a joint statement: ‘Our relationship was intensely passionate and at times volatile, but always bound by love.
‘Neither party has made false accusations for financial gain. There was never any intent of physical or emotional harm.’
And that should have been that. But the image of Amber’s bruised face remained in the public memory. When #MeToo took off, she became an icon for women sickened by the way actresses had been mistreated in Hollywood.
Whether you believed #MeToo was a new dawn for feminism or a new satanic panic, Amber was poised for the moment. Her public persona transformed from silenced, persecuted victim to outspoken survivor and advocate. As a Hollywood activist, Amber’s celebrity grew to new heights.
In May 2018, she was selected to be a global ambassador at L’Oreal, a role that A-list actresses Dame Helen Mirren, Julianne Moore, and Eva Longoria also held, and which involved, in Amber’s words, being ‘a spokesperson for this dynamic, world-loved beauty brand that’s been telling women ‘we’re worth it’ since before I was born.’
The ACLU (slated to receive $3.5million – £2.6million – of her divorce settlement) appointed her an ambassador of women’s rights, with a focus on gender-based violence. Amber was a star guest at the 2018 ‘Incredible Women’ gala in Hollywood, which celebrated the one-year anniversary of #MeToo and Time’s Up.
She took to the stage in a red velvet tuxedo jacket and black cigarette pants to read aloud an open letter she had written entitled ‘To My Silent Sisters’. The letter didn’t name Johnny, but it discussed the stigma of coming forward as a victim of domestic violence in Hollywood.
‘No matter how terrible or terrifying surviving trauma may be,’ she read, ‘the truth is, it can pale in comparison to what happens after’.
Amber was a star guest at the 2018 ‘Incredible Women’ gala in Hollywood, which celebrated the one-year anniversary of #MeToo and Time’s Up. Pictured: Amber at the event in 2018
In private, Amber had been vocal about the fact that she believed her career and reputation had suffered because she went public as the abuse victim of an ultra-famous and beloved star.
Though the headwinds of #MeToo were against him, Johnny wasn’t exiled – yet. His reputation had taken a hit, but JK Rowling was still in his corner (he was playing Gellert Grindelwald in the Harry Potter spin-off, Fantastic Beasts), he was still working on new films and his nearly $22.5million (£16.7million) pay cheque for Pirates Of The Caribbean 6 was on the horizon.
Then, on April 27, 2018, the tabloid newspaper The Sun printed a story with the headline ‘Gone Potty: How can JK Rowling be “genuinely happy” casting wife beater Johnny Depp in the new Fantastic Beasts Film?’
The article challenged JK Rowling on her decision to keep Johnny in the cast, and The Sun ran the same photo of Amber’s bruised face that had appeared on TMZ. Something shifted for Johnny with this article. Seeing his name in print, attached to the word ‘wife beater’, in a major news publication was a bridge too far. He sued for libel.
In the months that followed, Johnny was photographed looking unrecognisable. Headlines described him as ‘gaunt’, ‘pale’ and ‘shockingly thin’. He took to wearing a black fitted cap that said ‘FUGLY’ in large block letters across the front.
In November 2018, the ACLU approached Amber to write an article asserting that survivors of gender-based violence had been made less safe under the first Trump administration. It would debut Amber’s new role with the ACLU and conveniently coincide with the US release of her new movie, Aquaman.
The film, which had already been released in the UK, was shaping up to be a huge hit at the box office.
The ACLU suggested the piece should ‘interweave her own personal story, saying how painful it is as a survivor to witness these setbacks’ and helped by ghost-writing it for her.
In January 2019, Amber (pictured in June 2023) graced the cover of Glamour’s final print issue, wearing a low-cut, baby-blue satin suit and leaning against a shiny red convertible. The headline: ‘Amber Heard: Silence Is Complacency’
The piece was published by the Washington Post on December 18, 2018 under the headline: ‘Amber Heard: I spoke up against sexual violence and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change.’
Again, she did not mention Johnny’s name, but the media was quick to fill in the blanks.
‘Amber claims accusing Johnny Depp of domestic abuse lost her jobs,’ ran a headline in Elle magazine, while People magazine ran with: ‘Amber Heard says she was dropped from jobs after making Johnny Depp allegations.’
The blowback came swiftly for Johnny. Two days after the article was published, he was dropped from the forthcoming instalment of Pirates Of The Caribbean.
In January 2019, Amber graced the cover of Glamour’s final print issue, wearing a low-cut, baby-blue satin suit and leaning against a shiny red convertible. The headline: ‘Amber Heard: Silence Is Complacency.’
Two months later, she was served with papers. Johnny was suing her for $50million (£37million) for defaming him in the Washington Post.
Johnny’s lawsuit categorically denied that he ever abused Amber, claiming that her allegations were part of an ‘elaborate hoax to generate positive publicity.’
He stated that her story had been ‘refuted’ by two police officers (who had seen no injury to Amber the night they were called to her apartment), multiple third-party witnesses, and 87 surveillance camera tapes.
The lawsuit was also a plot twist in the wider #MeToo movement: Johnny (pictured at his defamation trial against Amber in 2022) was turning the tables on his accuser
But the lawsuit was also a plot twist in the wider #MeToo movement: Johnny was turning the tables on his accuser.
‘Ms Heard is not a victim of domestic abuse; she is a perpetrator,’ he claimed. ‘She hit, punched and kicked me. She also repeatedly and frequently threw objects into my body and head, including heavy bottles, soda cans, burning candles, television remote controls and paint thinner cans, which severely injured me.’
He added that she committed these acts ‘while mixing prescription amphetamines and non-prescription drugs with alcohol.’
Here was a powerful male celebrity, who had been publicly accused of domestic violence, not only asserting that the allegations were false, but claiming he was the true victim, and that his much younger wife, a #MeToo advocate, was a systematic abuser.
‘I have denied Ms Heard’s allegations vehemently since she first made them in May 2016 when she walked into court to obtain a temporary restraining order with painted-on bruises that witnesses and surveillance footage show she did not possess each day of the preceding week,’ his filing continued. ‘I will continue to deny them for the rest of my life.’
The following month, Amber hit back: she was now claiming 13 incidents of domestic violence, described in painstaking detail over 14 pages.
Her version of what happened behind closed doors was distressing and graphic. Amber described bloody gashes, being dragged through broken glass, bruised and swollen noses, black eyes, hair pulled from her scalp, being held against the wall by her neck, being suffocated on their marital bed, clothes torn clean off her body, repeated punches to her head, and being dragged up sets of stairs by her hair.
Johnny’s lawyer called the document listing the incidents a ‘public firebomb’.
Unless a settlement could be reached, Amber and Johnny would be headed to court in Virginia. Pictured: Amber at the defamation trial in 2022
Unless a settlement could be reached, Amber and Johnny would be headed to court in Virginia.
But first, they would square off at the Royal Courts of Justice in London for Johnny’s defamation case against The Sun. Amber had a trove of pictures, videos, audio recordings and witnesses to support her claims of abuse before the judge.
But Johnny’s lawyers had unearthed new evidence of their own.
In January 2020, two months before the trial was due to begin, Johnny’s old friend and colleague Stephen Deuters was on his work computer when a file popped up labelled ‘AVM’ (for ‘Amber voice messages’). He opened the folder and scrolled through the audio recordings, all more than five years old, and totalling more than six hours.
‘Holy s***!’ he said. He knew he’d found gold. Hours of recordings (consensually recorded on Amber’s phone) capturing their bitter fights were now in Team Depp’s possession.
A Daily Mail headline dropped: ‘Exclusive: ‘I can’t promise I won’t get physical again, I get so mad I lose it.’ Listen as Amber Heard admits to ‘hitting’ ex-husband Johnny Depp and pelting him with pots, pans and vases in explosive audio confession.’
#JusticeForJohnnyDepp started trending across Twitter and TikTok, and would continue to grow through the forthcoming trials. Amber’s Instagram comments, meanwhile, were mobbed by angry Johnny supporters. The internet was starting to take Johnny’s side, with Amber becoming the poster child of #MeToo’s overreach.
More lurid evidence about the couple’s life together surfaced in court – including the accusation that Amber had once defecated in their bed (she insisted it was their dogs) – but Johnny lost his case in London.
This time Johnny (pictured after closing arguments during his defamation trial against Amber in 2022) won his case. The jury found unanimously that he had proved defamation and that Amber had defamed him with ‘actual malice’
His lawyers accidentally disclosed some appalling texts he had sent to actor Paul Bettany (‘Let’s burn Amber’, ‘Let’s drown her before we burn her!!! I will f*** her burnt corpse afterward to make sure she is dead’).
The judge found Johnny guilty of 12 of the 14 violent incidents to which Amber had testified: therefore The Sun had not libelled him when it called him a ‘wife beater’.
In November 2020, Johnny began his pre-trial deposition for Depp vs Heard in front of Amber’s lawyer, who asked him if he would have felt vindicated if the UK ruling had come down in his favour. Johnny replied that it didn’t matter. He lost when Amber made the accusations, the damage was done.
‘My continuing to demand the truth is not for me to win,’ he explained, ‘but it’s for the people out there, the women, the victims of this type of thing who are not believed, who are being lied to by your client pretending to be some new messiah of the women’s movement. She is a fraud.’
The trial would not get under way for a year: originally scheduled to begin in May 2021, it was delayed due to the Covid pandemic.
While he and Amber waited in limbo, they both went through big life changes. In April 2021, Amber’s daughter Oonagh was born by surrogate.
She posted branded content for L’Oreal on Instagram, along with videos chronicling her intensive diet and exercise regimen for Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom, which she’d film over four months in the latter half of 2021.
Johnny, meanwhile, unveiled a new vocation as an artist. In January 2022, his artwork entered the world in the form of a digital collection of Warhol-like portraits, entitled Never Fear Truth.
Celebrity trials have always captured the public’s imagination, playing out like soap operas in the media – and this one was no different, being fully televised. Pictured: Amber in 2018
As anticipation mounted ahead of the trial, legal experts opined that the odds weren’t in Johnny’s favour. This time around, he was suing Amber directly, not a tabloid. In order to prove that Amber knowingly made defamatory statements about him, he had to prove a negative – that he never committed domestic violence. It would be a much tougher legal challenge than in the UK, where defamation law should have favoured his case, and yet he’d still lost.
Celebrity trials have always captured the public’s imagination, playing out like soap operas in the media – and this one was no different, being fully televised.
Scores of ‘Deppheads’ turned the suburban Fairfax County Circuit Courthouse into a freaky festival: there was a pair of stinky alpacas wearing rainbow pom-pom necklaces and countless Jack Sparrow impersonators. Someone even managed to get a truck converted to look like a pirate ship into the courthouse grounds.
The sheriff’s office tracked the IDs of every spectator who waited in line to get a wristband for entry to the courtroom; they logged driving licences from 41 different states and passports from 15 different countries.
During the trial, Johnny gained 9.56million new followers on Instagram, 100 times more than Amber, who gained 91,511.
By now, 13 years had passed since Johnny and Amber had met, when she was 23 and he 46, and five years since #MeToo had sparked a global reckoning.
But the world had changed since the zealous, hardline early days of the #MeToo movement. The refrains of ‘Believe Women’ were no longer at a fever pitch.
Now almost everyone knew someone who’d been cancelled or de-platformed. To some, distinctions between inappropriate comments, harassment and assault no longer seemed clear or even relevant. To others, frustrations with ‘cancel culture’, the erosion of due process and #MeToo’s perceived excesses simmered.
Before, during and after the trial, it was clear that Depp vs Heard had become a vehicle for myriad divergent political and personal causes. Pictured: Johnny at a premiere last year
People seemed more willing to acknowledge the grey areas: a relationship simply not working out isn’t the same as an abusive one.
This time Johnny won his case. The jury found unanimously that he had proved defamation and that Amber had defamed him with ‘actual malice’.
They awarded him $10million (£7.5million) in compensatory damages and $5million (£3.7million) in punitive damages. The punitive damages would later be reduced to $350,000 (£261,000) due to a limit imposed by Virginia state law.
Ruling on Amber’s defamation counterclaim for $100million (£74.5million), the jury found just one statement, made by Adam Waldman, Johnny’s lawyer, to be defamatory and false and made with ‘actual malice’. She was awarded $2million (£1.49million) in compensatory damages from Johnny but no punitive damages.
Before, during and after the trial, it was clear that Depp vs Heard had become a vehicle for myriad divergent political and personal causes. The world wanted a black-and-white story: villain vs hero, abuser vs victim, liar vs truth-teller. It had never been that simple.
© Kelly Loudenberg and Makiko Wholey, 2025
Adapted from Hollywood Vampires by Kelly Loudenberg and Makiko Wholey (Mudlark £25), to be published July 31. To order a copy for £22.50 (offer valid to 02/08/25; UK p&p free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.
