“Monster” Johnny Depp had “abusive” personalities

FAIRFAX. Virginia – Amber Heard’s whirlwind romance with Johnny Depp turned into a real horror movie when the actor turned into a Jekyll and Hyde ‘monster’ – who hit her and threatened to kill her when he was abusing drugs and alcohol, she testified on Wednesday.

The harrowing details of the couple’s torn love story came as the “Aquaman” actress took a stand on Depp’s side in her bombshell defamation trial after more than three weeks of jury hearings.

“He was the love of my life, but he was also this other thing … And that other thing was terrible,” Heard said in the Fairfax, Virginia courtroom.

A “horrible thing that would come out and take over and you couldn’t see the Johnny I loved underneath it,” she continued, saying Depp, 58, called his abusive self “the monster.”

Heard, 36, who got emotional several times during her few hours as a witness, said she never knew which version of the Pirates of the Caribbean star she was going to get.

“Johnny on speed is very different than Johnny on opiates. Johnny on opiates is very different from Adderall and cocaine Johnny, which is very different from Quaalude’s Johnny, but I had to get good at paying attention to the different versions of him,” she testified.

Heard told the court that her relationship with Depp was intense from the start, but initially it was part of the appeal.

“Being around Johnny made me feel like the most beautiful person in the world,” she said, seemingly fighting back tears. “It made me feel seen. I felt like a million bucks.”

The turning point in their relationship came when Depp first hit her in March 2013, she testified.

“I’ll never forget it. It changed my life,” she said. The couple had been sitting on the couch when she asked him about a tattoo she couldn’t recognize.

Depp told her it was called “Wino,” which made her laugh. But he reportedly didn’t find it funny – and slapped her in the face, Heard testified.

“I laughed because I didn’t know what else to do. I thought this must be a joke,” she said.

She thought, “He’d start laughing too, to tell me it’s a joke” — but instead, she claimed, he yelled, “You think it’s so funny? You think that’s funny, bitch? You think you’re a funny bitch.”

Depp slapped her again before getting on his hands and knees, holding her hands and sobbing for forgiveness.

“I’ll never do that again, I’m so sorry baby… I thought I put the monster away,” Depp said, according to Heard.

Earlier Wednesday, the jury was played an audio recording of Heard asking Depp about his “monster” mode.

“Is the monster gone? Did you put it away?” Heard said.

As a “monster,” Depp would smash things, break furniture, throw cups at her, call her a “whore,” and turn their relationship into “an endless battle,” she said.

Depp was a jealous partner who always accused her of cheating with a “revolving door of allegations.” He once tried to burn a painting that an ex-lover of Heard had done with a BIC lighter, she said.

She got emotional when she recounted a particularly harrowing encounter in May 2013 when Johnny Depp allegedly performed a non-consensual “cave search” on her while he was looking for his drugs.

Heard said the moment began when an alleged high-ranking dork accused her of hiding his drugs.

Depp started patting her dress before ripping it off and her underwear.

“Then he runs a cavity search,” Heard said with a whimper.

“He just shoved his fingers inside me,” she continued, adding that she “just stood there and faced the stupid light” as he twisted his fingers around inside her.

In another July 2013 story, Heard said her ex-husband threatened to kill her while the two were in the Bahamas in July of that year.

“He smacks me up by my neck and holds me there for a second and tells me he could fucking kill me and that I would be an embarrassment,” she said.

The couple had been on the island with Depp’s two children, then in their early teens, and had taken one last trip on their yacht before selling it to JK Rowling.

His daughter, Lily-Ross Depp, now 22, was angered by her father’s drunken behavior, Heard said, and Depp accused the actress of telling his children about his addiction problems before allegedly attacking them.

Despite the alleged abuse, Heard said he held on to hope that he would get sober.

“What held me to it was waiting for the other shoe to fall, the sobriety shoe,” she said.

But Depp didn’t stop. And his ongoing drug and alcohol addictions, she said, left her trapped in a marriage to an abuser she loved too much to leave.

The actress, who wears a three-piece suit and a blue button-down shirt with white stripes, said she was just 22 when the pair first met in 2008 while auditioning for The Rum Diary.

Heard, who said she’s a “no-name” actress, was charmed after learning she and Depp shared many of the same interests, such as poetry.

“It was weird because he was twice my age and this world famous actor,” Heard said.

The two played romantic interests in the film, which is based on the life of Hunter S. Thompson, an idol of Depp, and when they had a kissing scene where the “lines got blurred,” she said.

“It didn’t feel like a normal scene anymore … it felt more real,” Heard told the judges. “He grabbed my face and pulled me to him and actually kissed me.”

The two fell in love a few years later on the film’s press tour in 2011.

They began “secretly dating” as it was not yet known that Depp had split from his former partner Vanessa Paradis, the mother of his children. At first he was generous, showering her with gifts and making big, romantic gestures, she said.

Being with Depp before it all went to hell “felt like absolute magic,” she said.

“I felt like this man knew me, saw me in a way someone else had.”

Depp is suing Heard for $50 million, alleging she defamed him in a 2018 op-ed in The Washington Post in which she spoke about being a victim of domestic violence. He denies all allegations of abuse against her.

Though he wasn’t named in the essay, Depp claims it was clearly referring to him and ruined his career, damaged his reputation and cost him tens of millions of dollars.

Depp barely made eye contact with his ex-wife as she testified. He has already taken a stand, giving the jury his side for four days, including how he filed the lawsuit to “clear my name.”

Heard will continue her testimony on Thursday.