Despite a devastating court ruling that validated a U.K. tabloid calling him a “wife beater,” Johnny Depp still thinks he can salvage what’s left of his rock-bottom reputation.
Or, according to a report, the embattled star is so “filled with an unquenchable thirst for revenge” against his ex-wife Amber Heard that he’s pursuing what legal experts say is likely to be another losing court case in Virginia, from which his “career may never recover.”
In the process, Depp might drag other famous names into his “vortex” of revenge and self-destruction, according to The Hollywood Reporter. For his Virginia court case, set to start in the new year, he must produce private communications he had with former romantic partners, who, The Hollywood Reporter and Vanity Fair say, apparently “includes about half of Hollywood’s A-list actresses.”
Depp’s next court battle is “shaping up to be even more revelatory” than his tabloid-fueling libel trial in the U.K. over the summer, Vanity Fair said. Depp is reportedly obligated to produce for the court “all responsive communications” with his former romantic partners, which The Hollywood Reporter said includes Angelina Jolie, Keira Knightley and Marion Cotillard.
Depp’s ex-girlfriend, Ellen Barkin, has already given deposition in the Virginia case that centers on Depp’s $50 million lawsuit against Heard over a Washington Post op-ed she wrote about being a victim of domestic violence.
Barkin said Depp threw a wine bottle in her direction while they were dating in the late 1990s. Depp testified during his U.K. court case that Barkin only accused him of being violent after he rejected her desire for a more serious relationship, the Daily Mail reported.
The U.K. court case involved Depp’s lawsuit against The Sun, which published a story alleging that the “Pirates of the Caribbean” actor was “a wife beater” and abusive to Heard during their relationship and 15-month marriage that ended in 2016.
The judge in the U.K. case, Justice Andrew Nichol, handed down an excoriating 132-page ruling in which he said he believed most of Heard’s abuse allegations. Depp this week decided to appeal Nichol’s ruling, even though the ruling and the U.K. trial were filled with embarrassing and disturbing details about Depp’s drug use, erratic behavior and even messages to a co-star about wanting to “drown,” “burn” and then have sex with Heard’s corpse “to make sure she’s dead,” the Hollywood Reporter said.
Depp is reportedly determined to put himself, Heard and more of his alleged ex-romantic partners through the process of having to reveal personal information.
Depp’s relationships with some of those women, including Jolie, Cotillard and Knightley, have never been fully fleshed out. Vanity Fair said representatives for Jolie, Cotillard, and Knightley did not respond to requests for comment.
When Depp and Cotillard, 45, filmed the gangster drama “Public Enemies” in 2008, there were rumors that the pair flirted heavily on set and “their chemistry was palpable,” Vanity Fair said. However, neither ever confirmed a romance, probably because Depp was still in a relationship with Vanessa Paradis, the mother of his two children.
There also were rumors that Jolie, 45, and Depp had a romantic relationship after meeting on the set of the 2010 film “The Tourist.” At the time, Jolie and Brad Pitt were in the early years of their famously glamorous, globe-trotting relationship, during which they were rearing their six children. In Touch Weekly reported that Depp and Jolie actually couldn’t stand each other — and their lack of chemistry in the critically maligned “The Tourist” is evident.
Vanity Fair said Depp spoke rapturously of Jolie in an interview at the time. “She’s everything,” he said. “She’s kind of a walking poem, Angelina is. She’s this perfect beauty but at the same time very deep, very smart, very quick, very clever, very funny, and also has a very perverse sense of humor.”
As for Knightley, she has never confirmed a relationship with the actor, though they worked together on the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise together over the course of a decade, Vanity Fair said. Depp suggested there was nothing romantic between them in an Evening Standard interview. He also pointed out that she was too young for him, although Vanity Fair noted that Heard, 34, is younger than Knightley, 35.
“Kissing someone you are not romantically involved with is always awkward, but the fact that Keira is 20-something years younger than me made it infinitely more awkward,” Depp said. “Still, she was a good sport about it and we did what we had to do.”
With his appeal in the U.K. and his court case in Virginia, Depp is fighting a very steep legal battle, legal experts say. Depp was in “a very favorable position in the U.K.” because in that country the burden of proof in libel cases is on the defendant, said Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor who is in private practice with West Coast Trial Lawyers in Los Angeles
Even in that favorable setting, Depp lost, and he lost badly.
In Virginia, the burden of proof will be on him, and “Heard could argue that Depp is trying to squelch her First Amendment rights and penalize her for speaking about an issue of public concern,” Rahmani said in an email to this news organization.
“Depp should get out of the defamation lawsuit business while he still has a fragment of a movie career,” Rahmani said. “The Virginia case is also a loser, like many celebrity family law cases that do little to show celebrities in a good light. Depp should stick to scripts written by others, rather than airing his real-life drama in a courtroom.”
There’s a real question of whether there’s much of a career to salvage. In a lengthy examination of Depp’s “self-made implosion,” The Hollywood Reporter said the actor has spent the past four years spiraling from an A-list star responsible for more than $10 billion in worldwide box office to Hollywood persona non grata, beginning when Heard’s abuse allegations first surfaced in 2016.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, claims made in at least six recent lawsuits involving Depp, along with multiple interviews, “paint a picture of an out-of-control Depp, a casualty of Hollywood’s sycophant culture in which his wild spending and substance abuse were rarely challenged.”
“He’s just never been told no for the past 35 years,” a producer who had worked with Depp told The Hollywood Reporter. “That’s typical in Hollywood. But I’ve never seen it to this extent.”
In the past month, however, people have started to tell Depp no, and in a very public way. After the U.K. ruling, Depp announced that he had lost his role as the dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald in highly lucrative “Fantastic Beasts” film franchise. Officially, Depp was not fired by Warner Bros., but he was asked to resign from the five-film Harry Potter series, which he did.
“You simply can’t work with him now,” one studio head told The Hollywood Reporter. “He’s radioactive.”
