Johnny Depp is a master at treading the fine line between darkness and humor on-screen.
When it comes to his personal life, though, he's apparently the master of crossing
lines instead. Whether it's a former co-star or an entire city,
Johnny Depp has definitely found himself on more than a couple of bad sides.
Johnny Depp and Amber Heard met while filming The Rum Diary, and started dating in 2012. By
January 2014, they were engaged. However, things quickly turned sour from there.
Though they walked down the aisle in 2015, text messages obtained by Entertainment
Tonight date Depp's alleged abusive behavior as far back as May of 2014.
More details came forward during the pair's grueling divorce trial in 2016.
Per Variety, Heard got a restraining order against the Pirates of the Caribbean star
days after their separation went public. TMZ was able to obtain the gritty legal documents,
in which Heard claimed her ex was verbally and physically abusive throughout the entirety of
their relationship. This included an incident where Depp allegedly threw an iPhone at her face.
Their divorce, finalized in 2017, may be the nastiest in Hollywood history,
emphasized by a video obtained by TMZ that showed Depp slamming kitchen cabinets.
Per BBC News, Depp has fiercely denied Heard's accusations, claiming he was the victim and
filing defamation suits against Heard and News Group Newspapers, whose article in The Sun
labeled him a "wife-beater." The latter suit was dismissed in 2020, but Heard
ultimately filed her own $100 million defamation countersuit, which is still playing out in court.
Tesla co-founder Elon Musk was somehow dragged into Johnny Depp's drama with
Amber Heard — and he didn't seem all that thrilled about it. In fact,
he alleged that Depp was trying to frame him for adultery.
According to E! News, Grimes' baby daddy was brought into the mix in 2019, when Depp filed
his $50 million defamation suit against Heard. This followed her op-ed in The Washington Post,
in which she claimed she was a victim of domestic abuse, something Depp has fervently denied. In
Depp's filing, he alleged that Heard got involved with the SpaceX founder when Depp was out of the
country, quote, "no later than one month" after their nuptials. Apparently, staff at the building
that holds Depp's penthouse saw Musk coming in "late at night" and leaving in the morning.
Musk's story differs. Per E! News, a rep for the billionaire claimed Musk and Amber "didn't
start seeing each other until May 2016," and things didn't take a romantic turn
until "some time later." Musk defended himself in a Twitter post, claiming Depp's team, quote,
"put out 'video evidence'" of the alleged affair "but conveniently
excluded the date stamp." At the time, he alleged Heard and Depp had already separated.
It's rough when you get on an entire city's bad side,
but Johnny Depp probably should've thought about that when he threw Wichita , Kansas under the bus
during his press rounds for The Rum Diaries. In an effort to defend the flick,
which is one of his biggest box office flops, the star told The Guardian:
"I believe that this film, regardless of what it makes in, you know, Wichita, Kansas, this week
— which is probably about $13 — it doesn't make any difference [...] I think it's an intelligent
film [...] And a lot of times, outside the big cities in the States, they don't want that."
Residents of Wichita, which has a population just shy of 390,000,
were rightly displeased with Depp's assumption that they weren't smart enough for the film.
The Guardian reported what local cinema owner Bill Warren told The Wichita Eagle:
"That's just sour grapes. Last time I heard, it didn't do well in New York,
either [...] It wasn't a very entertaining movie, period."
Considering The Rum Diaries has a 36 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, it's probably
safe to admit that Wichita as a whole wasn't the only one who thought it wasn't very good.
Ezra Miller has had his own share of problematic headlines, so he certainly isn't very happy
about being dragged into someone else's. The Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald star
totally threw the production under the bus for keeping Johnny Depp in his prominent role
after Amber Heard's widespread domestic abuse allegations broke. JK Rowling adamantly defended
the casting choice on her website, claiming both Heard and Depp, quote, "expressed the desire to
get on with their lives." Miller seemed a little less pleased with her decision.
"Okay…"
In a 2018 interview with Playboy, Miller did not respond well to questions about
Depp and his involvement in The Crimes of Grindelwald, ultimately ending on a vague note:
"I would say that literally every single aspect of my reality,
inclusive of a lot of things that are not fine with me, are fine with me."
So, he was fine with and not fine with Depp's role? It's unclear exactly what that means,
but he sure doesn't sound like the actor's biggest fan.
Ultimately, Depp was ousted from the series in 2020 after losing his libel suit against The Sun.
Harry Potter himself — the face of nearly everything JK Rowling touches — seemed
to be just as annoyed as Ezra Miller about Johnny Depp's Crimes of Grindelwald casting.
Long before Depp's eventual ouster from the series in 2020, Daniel Radcliffe didn't hold back his
frustrations, even though he thanked the film's producers for his initial success in Hollywood.
All that means is that Harry Potter's smart enough to not bite the hand that feeds him,
unless that hand is Voldermort's.
In a 2018 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Radcliffe pointed out the double standard by
comparing Depp's situation to the NFL, where some players are arrested for smoking marijuana,
but others slide by with much worse behavior because of their fame:
"I suppose the thing I was struck by was,
we did have a guy who was reprimanded for weed on the [original Potter] film,
essentially, so obviously what Johnny has been accused of is much greater than that."
This was a reference to Jamie Waylett, who played Vincent Crabbe in the series. After the actor was
arrested for growing 10 marijuana plants, he was dropped from The Deathly Hallows, and ultimately
pleaded guilty in court. If that wasn't enough, his subsequent arrest after carrying a petrol bomb
in the 2011 London riots probably would've gotten him expelled from Hogwarts anyway.
Michael Mann and Johnny Depp are quite obviously not fond of each other -- at least if you're
reading the tabloids. The pair worked together on the biographical crime drama Public Enemies,
which premiered in 2009. Though the film was met with rave reviews and shocking declarations
that the true-life story was so jaw-droppingly gritty it had to be toned-down for audiences,
one of the grittiest parts may have been what happened on set.
A Daily Beast article alleged that things were so bad between Depp and Mann on set
that, at one point, Depp refused to talk to the director. During an interview with The
Baltimore Sun, Mann downplayed their tensions, but didn't deny the allegations either, saying:
"I will tell you there were scenes and moments it was complete and total
rapport , and other times I'm seeing it one way and we're butting heads a little
bit [...] Johnny said to me the other night, 'When things are wonderful and blissful on set,
it's usually not a good movie.' I want actors to have an interpretation."
Dan Wootton , executive editor of British newspaper The Sun, definitely wasn't quiet about
his distaste for Johnny Depp. In fact, he was so vocal that it actually got him in legal trouble.
In a 2018 headline, Wootton dubbed Depp a "wife-beater" and criticized JK Rowling for
casting him in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. That headline has since been amended
to remove the "wife beater" claims, but Wootton still asked why Rowling was, quote, "hellbent
on backing her famous pal — despite his clearly inexcusable behavior towards ex-wife Amber Heard."
Depp, who's loudly denied Heard's claims of abuse, was not happy to be dubbed a
"wife beater," and sued Wootton and News Group Newspapers, The Sun's parent company,
for libel. The pre-trial included character witness statements from his former partners,
Vanessa Paradis and Winona Ryder, who both supported him.
According to reports from The Guardian and the BBC, the case was postponed because of
the novel coronavirus pandemic, but did eventually go to trial later in 2020.
After The Sun managed to prove that "12 of the 14 alleged incidents" outlined in the
article actually happened, a judge dismissed the case, claiming The Sun's assertions were true.
Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp may have starred in some of the most
highly revered films in Hollywood, but The Tourist
wasn't one of them. The film holds an abysmal 20 percent critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes,
and perhaps some of this can be attributed to the pair's lack of onscreen chemistry.
According to a report from InTouch, Jolie and Depp apparently couldn't stand each other on set.
Now, let's be clear: InTouch isn't exactly known for being an
arbiter of truth. In fact, Jolie told The Hollywood Reporter that the pair, quote,
"really enjoyed working with each other," which also happens to be exactly the
kind of thing a person would say if they didn't want the public to know otherwise.
Allegedly, The Pirates of the Caribbean star believed Brad Pitt's ex was, quote,
"uptight and self-involved." Jolie allegedly believed Depp partied too much and was annoyed
by his blatant unprofessional behavior, such as staying out late and subsequently
showing up late for filming. Jolie was also reportedly "disappointed that he
didn't get in better shape for the role and that he didn't want to cut his hair."
Kathy Griffin was nearly blacklisted from Hollywood for her ill-advised joke about
Donald Trump, but Johnny Depp somehow managed to skirt the same fate when he joked about killing
the president at the Glastonbury arts festival in 2017. According to The New York Times,
Depp — referencing actor John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Abraham Lincoln — asked:
"When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?
The White House wasn't happy with Depp's comments. It's unclear if he warranted an
FBI investigation like Griffin's photo — we're guessing not — but the Trump administration still
publicly admonished him. According to The New York Times, then-press secretary Sean Spicer said:
"The president's made it clear that we should denounce violence in all of its forms."
Depp walked back on his comments in an interview with People
and chalked it up to a, quote, "bad joke" that was in "poor taste".
However, this wasn't the first time the White House had beef with the actor. According to TMZ,
Depp was kicked out of an HIV/AIDS benefit in January of 1988 for smoking in the Rose Garden.
Johnny Depp has had an enormously long career since first appearing in 1984's A Nightmare on
Elm Street. Some would argue that along the way, he's made some movies that really didn't need
to be made -- or, at the very least, he's played some characters quite terribly. Former PBS World
Channel host Celeste Headlee argued in a blog post that Depp's character in The Lone Ranger,
the 2013 film adaptation of the same-named 1950s TV show, was best left in the past:
"Tonto is a stereotype and that stereotype was so popular during the 1950's TV show that,
for many white Americans, the false image of Tonto became the only image of native
Americans that they had [...] Portrayals of American Indians on film have improved:
Last of the Mohicans , The Black Robe, Dances With Wolves are among dozens of good examples.
Tonto should have remained a relic of our ignorant, stereotypical past."
Headlee, who revealed on an NPR podcast that she's part Native American,
isn't alone in her criticism. The film garnered a low 31 percent critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes,
with one journalist for The Reader claiming Depp's character beat the Washington Redskins for the,
quote, "most grotesque pop culture representation of Native Americans."
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