Johnny Depp and his ex-wife Amber Heard’s personal lives were recently under scrutiny during a six-week defamation court case.
The “Aquaman” actress was ordered to pay her ex-husband $10.35 million in compensatory and punitive damages after a jury in Virginia ruled she had defamed him when she wrote an article in 2018 about being a victim of domestic abuse.
She was awarded only $2m in compensatory damages, but recently unsealed pretrial court documents have laid bare further details that were not aired in court.
And in a 2019 deposition that was part of the 6 000 pages of court documents, Barkin – who dated Depp for several months after their platonic friendship turned “sexual” in 1994 – has alleged the 59-year-old star “gave” her the sedative and asked her if she wanted to “f***”.
The “Big Easy” star, 68, claimed to Heard’s lawyers that Depp drank too much wine and once threw a bottle of wine at her in a hotel room.
Barkin said the former “Pirates of the Caribbean” star was “a yeller” and “verbally abusive”. However, she insisted he was never physically abusive towards her.
Barkin claimed it was his staff who would take the brunt of his violence and claimed he would call his assistant “pig”.
She said: “His assistant. People who would work on the film, maybe in what he would view as a lower capacity than he functions at. There is just a world of violence.”
Speaking of his drinking habit, she said: “He was drunk all the, most, a lot of the time.”
She added of his drug taking: “He was always drinking – or smoking a joint.”
Heard’s lawyer asked Barkin: “Did there come a time when Mr Depp acted in a way that was out of control with you?”
To which she responded: “Yes. Mr Depp threw a wine bottle across … the hotel room in one instance in Las Vegas while shooting ‘Fear and Loathing’.”
According to Barkin, it was amid an argument between Depp, his friends and his assistant.
She said it wasn’t unexpected: “There is always an air of violence around him.”
Barkin described Depp as a “jealous, controlling” man and recalled him allegedly accusing her of having sex with someone because of a scratch on her back.
She said: “He’s just a jealous man, controlling. ‘Where are you going?’ ‘Who are you going with?’ ‘What did you do last night?’ I had a scratch on my back once that got him very, very angry because he insisted it came from having sex with a person who wasn’t him.”