A lawyer for British tabloid The Sun claimed Monday that Johnny Depp was “a hopeless addict” whose violence toward ex-wife Amber Heard was fueled by misogyny and a toxic combination of drink, drugs, jealousy and anger.
Attorney Sasha Wass was summing up at Depp’s libel case against the newspaper over an article alleging he physically abused Heard — a high-stakes celebrity trial in which the reputations of both former spouses are at stake.
Depp is suing News Group Newspapers, publisher of The Sun, and the newspaper’s executive editor, Dan Wootton, at the High Court in London over an April 2018 article, which called him a “wife-beater.” The actor strongly denies being violent to Heard.
The case is due to end Tuesday, but judge Andrew Nicol is not expected to deliver his ruling for several weeks.
“There is no doubt that Mr. Depp regularly and systematically abused his wife,” Wass said in her closing argument. “The characterization that he is a wife beater is entirely truthful.” She said Depp was “a hopeless addict who repeatedly lost his self-control and all ability to restrain his anger.”
“Permeating all of the evidence in this case is the character of Mr. Depp himself — his well-documented evidence of violence and destruction over his adult life which have occurred when he was under the influence of drink and drugs.”
Depp, 57, and Heard, 34, met on the set of the 2011 comedy The Rum Diary and married in Los Angeles in February 2015. Heard filed for divorce the following year, and the divorce was finalized in 2017.
