Actor Johnny Depp is out of a job. He announced Friday that he has resigned from the third Fantastic Beasts movie at the request of Warner Bros.
“The surreal judgment of the court in the U.K. will not change my fight to tell the truth and I confirm that I plan to appeal,” he said in a statement posted to Instagram. “My resolve remains strong and I intend to prove that the allegations against me are false. My life and career will not be defined by this moment in time.”
Depp recently lost a libel lawsuit against British outlet The Sun, which described him as a “wife beater” in a headline amid domestic violence allegations from ex-wife, actress Amber Heard. The publisher maintained that Depp was verbally and physically abusive in the relationship. The judge in the libel lawsuit pointed out incidents in which Heard was in “fear for her life,” according to the BBC.
Incident 5: Bahamas August 2014
“I find it more likely than not that Mr Depp did push Ms Heard on at least one occasion (as reflected in her text of 17th August 2014). I am not able to conclude whether there was more than this one assault….”
— Nick Wallis (@nickwallis) November 2, 2020
“… In any event, Ms Heard’s account is that she was generally assaulted by Mr Depp only when no one else was present. That is a common feature of domestic abuse….”
— Nick Wallis (@nickwallis) November 2, 2020
Depp claimed Heard threw a bottle of vodka at him in a 2015 incident in which he lost a fingertip, but the judge sided with Heard.
“It is a sign of the depth of his rage that he admitted scrawling graffiti in blood from his injured finger and then, when that was insufficient, dipping his badly injured finger in paint and continuing to write messages and other things,” the judge said.
[Image via Andreas Rentz/Getty Images for ZFF]