Amber Heard, giving evidence Wednesday at London’s Royal Courts of Justice on the 12th day of Johnny Depp’s libel trial against the publisher of The Sun newspaper, alleged Depp headbutted her the night before she appeared on James Corden’s “The Late Late Show” in December 2015.
Depp is suing News Group Newspapers and journalist Dan Wootton for an article on The Sun website that described him as a “wife beater.” Depp denies that he was violent toward Heard, to whom he was married from 2015 to 2017.
Heard has described in her witness statement the incident in December 2015 as “one of the worst and most violent nights of our relationship.”
Heard alleges that Depp slapped her, dragged her by the hair through their apartment – pulling clumps of her hair out – and then repeatedly punched her in the head.
Depp’s attorney Eleanor Laws said: “That’s just a complete set of lies, isn’t it?”
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Heard replied quietly: “No.”
A clip of Heard’s appearance on the chat show was played to the court, following which Laws said: “That is what you looked like on the show. There is no injury, is there?”
Heard replied: “I had tons of injuries.” She then said she had makeup on covering the injuries and added: “You can tell by the size of my lip alone.”
Stylist Samantha McMillen saw Heard shortly before her appearance on the chat show and had said in her evidence that the actress was not wearing makeup, with which Heard disagreed.
Heard said McMillen saw her while she was already having her makeup done. She said McMillen was her stylist for a short time while she was married to Depp, adding: “She is Johnny’s stylist.”
Makeup artist Melanie Inglessis said she saw the actress on the night of Dec. 15, 2015, after Heard texted to say Depp was “beating on me.”
She went to the L.A. penthouse to find Heard erratic and upset, she said.
“She said that Johnny and I had a fight,” Inglessis said.
“The main thing that stuck in my mind about the incident on the bed was she said he tried to suffocate her with a pillow. She felt he tried to kill her that night. She said he dragged her by her hair. That’s what I remember.”
Inglessis said she helped to prepare Heard’s makeup the next day for the “Late Late Show,” when Heard said she had two black eyes and a broken nose.
“She had minimum discoloration on her eyes, on the inner corner of her eyes, by her nose,” said Inglessis.
“I recall her left eye being a little more bruised than the right eye.”
“I remember the bridge of the nose being a little red and swollen. I remember a cut or scab on her lip.”
Laws put it to Heard that a photograph of her with bruises on her face taken after the alleged December 2015 incident was “completely set up,” which Heard denied.
Laws asked the actress why she took a photograph of her scalp, and Heard said her scalp was “in pain” and her friend Raquel Pennington took a photograph because she had red spots on her head and it was filled with pus from where it had been pulled out.
Laws questioned Heard over medical notes made by a nurse, Erin Boerum, who saw Heard shortly after the alleged incident, who recorded that Heard was “actively bleeding on her lip.”
The nurse also said she “briefly looked at the client’s scalp but was unable to visualize hematomas the client described.”
Laws said: “You didn’t have any bruises at all when you saw Erin Boerum, did you?”
Heard replied: “I had bruised ribs, bruises all over my body, bruises on my forearms from trying to defend the blows. I had two black eyes, I had a broken nose. I had a broken lip… the really bad ones [bruises] were in my hairline, on my scalp.”
Heard continued: “There was chunks of hair missing, there was pus in those wounds in my hair line, dark red bruises… purple-red on my temples and on my chin. The inside of my upper lip was cut.”
Laws said: “This is just nonsense, isn’t it? She [Boerum] didn’t see any bruising… you had just bitten your lip because there was fresh blood on it.”
Depp denies all allegations of violence.
The trial continues Thursday.
