Johnny Depp accused me of having affair with ‘pumpkin-head’ Leonardo DiCaprio, claims Amber Heard

34-year-old alleges series of attempts to control her by former partner as libel trial enters third week

Amber Heard has alleged that Johnny Depp accused her of having affairs with each of her co-stars and other Hollywood icons, including Leonardo DiCaprio and Channing Tatum, whom he nicknamed “pumpkin-head” and “potato-head” respectively.

Giving evidence against Mr Depp in his High Court libel battle with The Sun, Ms Heard described various instances in which she claimed he sought to exert increasing control over different aspects of her life.

Accusing her former partner of trying to police the amount of nudity or romantic scenes in her films, Ms Heard alleged that he “complained about how people can watch me ‘get f***ed on camera’”.

“He would insist every male actor was trying to sleep with me and/or that I had had an affair with them, that he’d spoken to people and knew all about it,” Ms Heard said in a witness statement.

“He would try and catch me out by taking my phone or telling me someone had told him I was having an affair and act as if he had information proving it – when I really hadn’t.

“He accused me of having affairs with each of my co-stars, movie after movie: Eddie Redmayne, James Franco, Jim Sturgess, Kevin Costner, Liam Hemsworth, Billy-Bob Thornton, Channing Tatum; even women co-stars like Kelly Garner.

“He also accused me of having affairs with stars I auditioned with, like Leonardo DiCaprio. He would taunt me about it – especially when he was drunk or high – and had derogatory nicknames for every one of my male co-stars he considered a sexual threat.

“For example, Leonardo DiCaprio was ‘pumpkin-head’, Channing Tatum was ‘potato-head’ and ‘Jim Turd Sturgess’.”

Ms Heard, 34, said Mr Depp, 57, would get himself copies of the scripts she was looking at, without asking her, in order to “review them for himself”. She said that she found herself turning down work, and that her salary fell every year she was with him.

“His rules got tighter every year we were together about what nudity or scenes were acceptable, wanting descriptions of every detail, every aspect of scenes and how they were covered, placing increasing restrictions on what I could and couldn’t do,” Ms Heard told London’s Royal Courts of Justice.

The allegations emerged in the third week of what is being described as the biggest English libel trial of the 21st century, in which Mr Depp is contesting an article in The Sun labelling him a “wife beater”. He strenuously denies all allegations of abuse.

The Aquaman star also said that Mr Depp’s doctor put her on “a long list of medications”, which she claimed were prescribed “in order to keep me sedated or keep me calm basically, to keep my body from responding to the world I was living in”.

Ms Heard added: “He spoke possessively of me as ‘my woman’ and made comments that he wished he had found me before I had slept with anyone else, joking he would have locked me away at 14.

“He would obsess about how I dressed. If I wore a low-cut dress, then he would say things like ‘my girl is not gonna dress like a whore’. Over time, I stopped wearing revealing dresses for red carpet events: it just wasn’t worth the verbal and psychological abuse.

“He demeaned me anytime I tried to wear anything that could be seen as sexy, calling me a ‘whore’, ‘slut’, ‘fame-hungry’ and ‘an attention whore’, but it got worse over time.

“He started saying things like ‘well I’m going to have to watch you get raped’ and ‘I hope you get railed by a bunch of f***ing fellas’.

“Sometimes he used racial epithets about the men I would be – or deserved to be – assaulted by, saying things like ‘a slimy Mexican’ or ‘a f***ing gang of big black mother f***ers are going to f*** you and get their big c*** in you’.”

She said Mr Depp also took her car without asking her, explaining that he was going to get it fixed for her as a gift, but alleging that this was an attempt to control her whereabouts.

“Once it was gone, he insisted that his drivers and handlers take me everywhere,” she said, adding that she did not have a car for the next three-and-a-half years.

“The same happened with security guards. He insisted on me having personal security, over my protests, and sent his own security guards with me, who would report back to him about where I was at all times.”

She denied Mr Depp’s lawyers suggestion that her being driven by Mr Depp’s staff - some of whom have said they believe Ms Heard was the aggressor – would have resulted in them witnessing the couple’s arguments, saying: “I don’t want to call anyone a liar but I’m saying they weren’t there.”

The actor, who met Mr Depp on the set of 2011 film The Rum Diary, insisted she was “never violent” towards her ex-husband and would only “try to defend” herself when he “got serious” and she felt her “life was threatened”.

Eleanor Laws QC, representing Mr Depp, suggested to Ms Heard that she would have “outbursts of rage and anger” and referred to “a number of witnesses” who described her as “being the person who would start an argument”.

The barrister played a recording of a 2015 conversation between Ms Heard and Mr Depp, in which Ms Heard appears to admit “hitting” Mr Depp and says to the actor: “You are such a baby. Grow the f*** up.”

Ms Heard can also be heard to respond to Mr Depp’s complaint that she “throws pots and whatever the f*** else at me” by saying: “That’s different.”

Ms Laws said: “You were admitting throwing things at him but not in the context of self-defence. It sounds as if you are admitting throwing pots and pans.”

Ms Heard replied: “It might sound like that to you, but because I lived it I can explain to you... (it is) not what it sounds like.”

Additional reporting by PA