Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s wedding in February 2015 at his mother’s Beverly Hills home was supposed to be a magical day, the happiest of their lives.
However, before the wedding, there were signs of trouble. Depp’s assistant, Stephen Deuters, and even punk rock legend Patti Smith, who was part of the ceremony, expressed concerns and foreboded a grim future for the couple.
On the day of the wedding, Depp’s longtime bodyguard, Malcolm Connolly, had a heart-to-heart with the actor, questioning his readiness to go through with the marriage. Depp confided in him that he was not sure about the decision.
And, as the vows were spoken, Betty Sue is said to have loudly declared: ‘She don’t love him.’
Ten years later, after their explosive separation, divorce and a grim trans-Atlantic airing of dirty laundry during two libel trials, authors Kelly Loudenberg and Makiko Wholey have pieced together the sorry saga.
Their book, Hollywood Vampires, exclusively obtained by the Daily Mail, lifts the lid on the couple’s sordid story and delves into the workings of publicists, enablers and hangers-on.
Both Depp, now 62, and Heard, 39, spoke to the authors for a documentary which they made ahead of writing their book, as did nearly 100 employees, friends and witnesses.
Heard stopped cooperating when the project turned into this book. The authors continued to have access to Depp and his team, and lift the lid on a combustible, intense and deeply disturbing relationship.
Both Depp, now 62, and Heard, 39, spoke to the authors for a documentary which they made ahead of writing their book, as did nearly 100 employees, friends and witnesses. (Pictured: Depp and Heard in 2015).
Kelly Loudenberg and Makiko Wholey’s book, Hollywood Vampires, exclusively obtained by the Daily Mail, , lifts the lid on the couple’s sordid story and delves into the workings of publicists, enablers and hangers-on (Pictured: Heard and Depp in 2015)
The Daily Mail has approached both Depp and Heard for comment: Heard did not reply, while Depp declined to comment.
The pair met in 2009 while making The Rum Diary, the debut project for Depp’s production company Infinitum Nihil, and the film was released two years later.
At the time, Heard was dating Hawaiian artist Tasya van Ree while Depp was in a long-term relationship with French actress Vanessa Paradis, mother of their children Lily-Rose, now 26, and Jack, 23.
Depp publicly credited Paradis with providing stability and aiding his sobriety but was nonetheless bewitched by his Texas-born co-star.
Bruce Witkin, Depp’s childhood friend from Kentucky, felt that Heard was bad for him, representing, the authors surmised, ‘the aspiring, ambitious side of Hollywood that Johnny had always run from’.
Witkin lamented that their blossoming relationship had sucked Depp into a world far from his own, causing him to distance himself from his friends of decades.
Sam Sarkar, who co-starred with Depp in his Hollywood breakout in the 1980s, the TV series 21 Jump Street, said the actor became distant on meeting Heard, and was ‘in her web of people’.
In May 2013, shortly before Depp’s 50th birthday, he and Heard travelled to meet a group of her friends for the first time at a glamping site in Joshua Tree National Park. The group, according to later legal filings from Heard, indulged in cocaine, ecstasy, alcohol and mushrooms, which all inspired volatile behavior.
It was, the authors write, the beginning of ‘a toxic roundabout of fighting and making up’, which only worsened after their January 2014 engagement.
Nathan Holmes, Depp’s British assistant, who had previously worked for Heath Ledger, said that he was baffled by the proposal. ‘I thought: “Now, why have you done that?”‘ Holmes said, adding that so intense were Depp and Heard’s rows that they caused him to develop stress hives.
He likened the pair to the poles of opposing magnets that couldn’t be brought together. ‘I hated it,’ said Holmes. ‘I hated their conflicts.’
According to the authors, the couple’s March 2014 engagement party, at Carondelet House, a 1920s Italian-inspired villa in Los Angeles, was a farce.
The invitations featured a sketch of Heard’s home state of Texas but not Depp’s native Kentucky, and were misspelt, inviting guests to celebrate ‘our engagment’.
Depp and Heard were, according to Sarkar, apart all night. He was upstairs with friends, including the musician Marilyn Manson, singer-songwriter Ryan Adams and Top Gun producer Jerry Bruckheimer; she stayed downstairs with her own group of friends.
Heard would later claim at trial that Depp was doing drugs upstairs. There were no toasts or speeches, and Sarkar said that he felt a sinking feeling inside.
By May 2014, Depp’s substance abuse was spiraling. Heard would later testify that on one occasion, during a flight on a private jet, a drunken Depp slapped and kicked her.
Text messages between Heard and the couple’s assistants corroborated the story of serious problems.
Depp agreed to meet Dr David Kipper, an addiction specialist who had treated the actor Danny DeVito and singer Ozzy Osbourne.
The pair met in 2009 while making The Rum Diary, the debut project for Depp’s production company Infinitum Nihil, and the film was released two years later.
By August 2014, he was in a detox center in the Bahamas, accompanied by Heard. He took steps towards sobriety but was soon back on drugs, appearing out of it while presenting an award to Mike Myers at the Hollywood Film Awards.
‘I was still in the throes of the kick, as it were,’ Depp would later explain. He said he was ‘a drug addict who was coming off a very, very unpleasant medication’.
As the wedding approached, Depp’s friends urged him to sign a prenuptial agreement. He was at the zenith of his success as the world’s highest-paid actor in 2007, 2008 and 2012, earning almost $10million a minute for his role as the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland.
His properties included a mock castle and historic penthouse in LA, a French village, an island in the Bahamas called Little Hall’s Pond Cay, and a 41-acre Kentucky horse farm.
Yet the demand for a prenup caused further friction. In an email written by Dr Kipper and submitted as evidence at trial, the doctor wrote that the pair had a blazing row over the terms during a flight to Japan in January 2015, with ‘thrown coffee, attempts by him to storm the cockpit, attempts by her to leave the plane while they were over the f****** ocean etc’.
The prenup was never signed.
Depp’s friends, according to authors Loudenberg and Wholey, feared that the wedding was being rushed to be over and done with before he began filming the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean film, for which he would earn a reported $90million.
‘When they were married, Amber would get half of all he’d make on his films,’ said Holmes, his assistant. ‘So she wanted to be married before the next Pirates film.’
For her part Heard said she simply wanted it to stabilize their union, before Depp relocated to Australia for six months filming.
Witkin, Depp’s childhood friend, said, ‘At first I’m like: ‘Is this really happening?’ It was rushed to me. I was freaked out but what am I gonna do – not go? I gotta try to be there to support him, you know?’
Four days after their LA ceremony, the couple staged a larger wedding party on Depp’s Bahamian island before jetting off to Australia where Depp transformed once again into Captain Jack Sparrow.
The newlyweds rented Diamond Head, an 18-acre estate on the Gold Coast, and their British butler, Ben King – who had worked for Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace – prepared the property for their stay.
But it would later emerge that there were tensions from the beginning. During the 2022 defamation trial brought by Depp against Heard in Virginia, he described her as ‘irate’ and ‘possessed’ over discussions about a post-nuptial agreement.
Heard stated that she requested the post-nup but Depp had told her ‘probably 25 times’ that they were married until death.
Left alone for the weekend, with food readied by their private chef, they were supposed to spend a relaxing few days alone together.
But their head of security Jerry Judge called Depp’s bodyguard Malcolm Connolly early on the Sunday morning.
‘Something’s happened with the boss, man,’ said Judge, according to Connolly. ‘You need to extract him. Just extract him, take him out of there.’
Connolly arrived to find a now much aired scene of chaos, with Depp’s fingertip severed and a house splattered with blood and paint stains. King, the butler, was called in to repair the damage, estimating it to be $50,000 to $150,000 worth.
Depp and Heard fled Australia separately, only to return a month later, all smiles.
But by the following year the wheels had well and truly come off the volatile couple’s romance. And in April 2016, the final straw came as Depp’s housekeeper discovered ‘a large pile of feces’ in the bed.
Heard blamed the dogs; Depp suspected it was deliberately left there in a fury at his turning up late for her 30th birthday party the night before.
The death of his mother just one month later spurred Depp to end the ill-fated 15-month marriage.
‘Life is a birdsong,’ Depp reflected in court five years later. ‘What feels like 100 years is, in fact, a second, a millisecond.’
He added, ‘It opened my eyes to the fact that, yes, try in relationships. If it’s not going to work, it’s not going to work.’
Their divorce, though bruising, was over relatively quickly: settled by August 2016 for $7million.
But more drama was to come.
As the wedding approached, Depp’s friends urged him to sign a prenuptial agreement. He was at the zenith of his success as the world’s highest-paid actor in 2007, 2008 and 2012, earning almost $10million a minute for his role as the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland.
During the 2022 defamation trial brought by Depp against Heard in Virginia, he described her as ‘irate’ and ‘possessed’ over discussions about a post-nuptial agreement.
Depp launched a lawsuit against the publisher of The Sun newspaper, News Group Newspapers, over an April 2018 article that referred to him as a ‘wife beater’ and criticized the author JK Rowling for casting him in the Fantastic Beasts film franchise.
He denied ever abusing Heard and argued that the article in the British tabloid had irreparably damaged his reputation and career.
The trial, held at London’s Royal Courts of Justice, became one of the most high-profile libel cases in UK history, with weeks of testimony from both Depp and Heard, as well as friends, staff and medical professionals.
Ultimately, in July 2020, the judge found that the newspaper’s description was ‘substantially true’.
Six months after Depp filed the suit, Heard wrote an op-ed piece in The Washington Post claiming that she was an abused spouse without naming Depp. He sued for defamation, winning this time, when the jury at the Fairfax County Circuit Court in Virginia found in June 2022 that she had defamed him and awarded more than $10million in damages.
Heard is living an apparently quiet life in Madrid and is now a mother of three, all born to a surrogate: a daughter Oonagh, born in 2021, and twins – a boy named Ocean and a girl named Agnes – whose arrival she announced on Mother’s Day this year.
Depp, meanwhile, is also living in Spain and filming his fourth film with Penelope Cruz, entitled Day Drinker.
Hollywood Vampires: Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, and the Celebrity Exploitation Machine (Dey Street Books), by Kelly Loudenberg and Makiko Wholey, is available from today.
