What Johnny Depp Is Doing With The Money From Amber Heard
Johnny Depp plans to donate the $1 million dollar settlement money he received from Amber Heard.
The court battles between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard seem to be over, for now. The former couple reached a settlement in their Virginia defamation lawsuit yesterday that awarded the actor $1 million in damages. Deadline reports that he intends to donate the money to charity.
The marriage between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard was almost as messy as their years-long legal battles have been. Their divorce and subsequent public statements have been splashed all over the media as they sued and countersued one another over an op-ed that she wrote for the Washington Post. Yesterday’s settlement marks the end of a legal battle that started in 2019 when he sued her for defamation over the op-ed.
In her 2018 writing, she alleges abuse in her marriage, which lasted less than two years. She never mentions Johnny Depp by name, but her rhetoric made it clear who Amber Heard was referring to. Johnny Depp also had a few public incidents of erratic behavior that supported her claims and made him a pariah among the Hollywood elite.
Honoring the terms of their 2017 divorce settlement, which included a $7 million payment from husband to wife, Johnny Depp had long kept silent about the sordid details that took place in the couple’s private life, but when Amber Heard wrote the op-ed, the actor could no longer keep silent. In 2019 he sued her in the state of Virginia for the sum of $50 million for defamation of character. Meanwhile, he was also suing the British newspaper The Sun, which called him a “wife beater” in their reporting on the op-ed.
Johnny Depp ultimately lost against The Sun and was twice denied an appeal by the British court in 2021 on the grounds that the premise for his appeal would fail the same way the original filing did. The ruling and subsequent denials saw the actor dropped from a few high-profile projects, including the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them franchise. The Virginia suit was elevated to $100 million and included the damages done to Johnny Depp’s career by Amber Heard’s allegations.
The Virginia suit was heard starting in April 2022 and went on for several weeks while the public was allowed to watch it unfold live. Johnny Depp painted a picture of continued abuse at the hands of Amber Heard, including an incident where he severed part of his finger with a vodka bottle during an argument. She in turn provided evidence that he had also acted violently, as well as police reports she had filed when the incidents took place.
The June 1 verdict in the case awarded Johnny Depp a total of $15 million and Amber Heard’s countersuit $2 million, but the judge in the case reduced the amount to $350,000 based on a state maximum. Both parties tried to appeal the ruling, but the process proved to be too complicated and costly. They settled yesterday, with Amber Heard paying Johnny Depp $1 million that he says he is donating to a variety of charities once he receives it.
This saga has rocked the entertainment world for seven years and has polarized fans behind one or the other celebrity. Unfortunately for both, the ugliness of their divorce means the names “Johnny Depp” and “Amber Heard” will be even more indelibly tied to one another than if they had parted quietly. Hopefully, we have reached the conclusion of this charged divorce drama and the two can go their separate ways without further incident.
