Johnny Depp is a wife beater.
Such is the finding of a British court, ruling against Depp’s claims of libel by the Sun newspaper. If nothing else proves how deeply Depp is divorced from reality, it’s that he ever brought this suit.
A former globally famous and beloved movie star, whose singular talent and looks made him a Gen X icon of cool and a one-man Disney franchise — who else could have straddled that line, let alone have invented it? — has lost everything. This is the biggest celebrity self-destruction since Lena Dunham showed photos of her removed uterus to a New York magazine profiler and wondered, without irony, why people find her an off-putting over-sharer.
Now, Depp will forever be known as not just a wife beater, but — due to the sheer volume of detail elicited at trial — a hopeless addict and alcoholic who used a tampon applicator to snort coke, who once sliced off part of his finger and used the bloody stump to scrawl hateful messages to then-wife Amber Heard, who pissed all over the floor in an attempt to write even more hateful words, a 50-something man unsure how he came to lose his entire $650 million fortune.
Oh, and the poop found in the Heard-Depp marital bed, ruled the judge, most likely came not from a vengeful Heard but one of the couple’s dogs.
A high court reduced to ruling on defecation.
Justice Andrew Nichol’s 129-page finding leaves no doubt that Depp is guilty. Here are Depp’s doctor’s notes, damning text exchanges in which Depp repeatedly apologizes to Heard for unspeakable acts, Depp’s admission of “the Monster” within, pathetic instances of childlike temper tantrums, humiliating blackouts on private planes and in luxury mansions.
“I simply do not accept,” Nichol wrote, “that [Depp] simply chose to sleep in the toilet.”
During a text exchange with actor Paul Bettany, Depp writes, “Let’s burn Amber!!! . . . Let’s drown her before we burn her!!! I will f—k her burnt corpse afterwards to make sure she’s dead.”
Has Depp not heard of the #MeToo movement? Is he unaware of what happened to Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, Les Moonves — men who had nothing near his accrued goodwill? How could Depp not see he’d be left more uninsurable than Robert Downey Jr. at his lowest, banished for life from the Magic Kingdom?
Ah, here’s how: After Depp’s first consult with Dr. David Kipper in May 2014, Kipper wrote, “Mr. Depp is a 50-year-old male who has had a lifelong history of self-medicating behaviors involving multiple substances of abuse,” so dangerously addicted that “I would not recommend withdrawal until he completes his current work.”
Kipper’s later assessments: Depp “actually romanticizes the entire drug culture and has no accountability for his behavior . . . he has no patience for not getting his needs met.”
Kipper also recommended a medically supervised 24-hour detox.
It didn’t take. Nor, found the judge, did Depp’s multiple promises to never hurt Heard again.
It’s shocking to read Johnny Depp, who for decades presented himself as the most evolved and gentle rebel, a doting daddy who once loved nothing more than playing Barbies with his little girl, writing a text message calling Heard “this . . . mushy, pointless dangling overused flappy fish market.”
Johnny Depp talks about women the way Donald Trump does. Who would have ever thought it?
This trial hasn’t just ended Johnny Depp. It ends any pretense that the public-facing image of any Hollywood star, no matter how beloved, should be taken to resemble the private one. It’s another terrible outcome of a terrible year, another loss, confronting Depp as he is, a late-stage Elvis surrounded by yes-men deputized to keep the boss drugged up and in denial.
It’s all such a drag — unless you’re Johnny Depp, transmitting from another planet. Moments after the ruling, his lawyers told the press “it would be ridiculous” for Depp not to appeal.