Amber Heard says legal battles with Johnny Depp have left her unable and unwilling to speak publicly. Photo / AFP
Amber Heard says legal battles with Johnny Depp have left her unable and unwilling to speak publicly. Photo / AFP
Amber Heard has “lost [her] ability to speak” after her legal battle with Johnny Depp.
The Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom actress has made a surprise appearance in Silenced, a documentary about accused men using defamation lawsuits to silence women speaking out about abuse, and she claimed she no longerwants to tell her own “story” about her marriage to the Pirates of the Caribbean actor.
In a confessional interview for Silenced – which has premiered at the Sundance Film Festival – with director Selina Miles, Heard said: “This is not about me. I have lost my ability to speak. I am not here to tell my story. I don’t want to tell my story. In fact, I don’t want to use my voice anymore. That’s the problem”.
International human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson is also involved with the documentary, and she assisted Heard with her participation in Depp’s 2018 libel lawsuit against the Sun newspaper, after they branded him a “wife-beater”, and she recalled how her former spouse’s fans shouted and jeered at her as she made her way to and from court.
She said: “The outcome of that trial depended on my participation, and I depended on the outcome of that trial. When I first met [Robinson], I immediately got the sense that she got the bigger picture. What has happened to me is an amplified version of what a lot of women live through.
“I remember at the close of the trial, the idea that I could say something to the press came up. [Robinson] asked if I was sure about that. [I thought], ‘If they throw things at me, it will make this point more obvious’. I didn’t understand it could get so much worse for me as a woman, using my voice.”
But the 39-year-old star has been given hope by seeing women speaking out.
She said: “It gives me strength seeing other people take on the fight. Women brave enough to address the imbalance of power. Looking at my daughter’s face as she grows up and slowly starts to walk into this world … I believe it can be better.”
While Depp lost his libel claim against the Sun, he also sued Heard for defamation for an op-ed she penned about surviving domestic abuse – although she did not name him in the piece – and the jury sided with Depp, awarding him US$1 million ($1.67m) in damages.
