Johnny Depp’s viability as an actor has become a topic of his  defamation case against ex-wife Amber Heard. Depp is suing Heard for $50 million over a 2018 Washington Post op-ed in which she identified herself as a domestic abuse survivor. Depp has denied the allegations she made against him. (Heard, who did not name Depp in her piece, is countersuing for $100 million.)

In pre-recorded testimony shown to the courtroom Wednesday, Heard’s former agent Christian Carino, who also served as Depp’s agent for a time, testified that Depp lost his role in Pirates of the Caribbean 6 because of Heard’s allegations. “My opinion is it was related to the accusations that Amber has made,” he said. Carino clarified that he had not spoken to anyone linked to the Pirates franchise aside from producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who didn’t say specifically that Depp was ousted from the series due to the allegations. Carino’s belief about Depp’s career is the result of “conversations with colleagues and studio executives…internal and external,” the agent said. He added, “It is something within the industry that is understood.” 

Depp’s flailing career has been a recurrent theme throughout his defense. “It’s been six years of trying times,” the Oscar nominee, who originated the role of Jack Sparrow, the protagonist of the Pirates series, in 2003, said during his April 19 witness testimony. “It’s pretty strange when one day you’re Cinderella, so to speak, then 0.6 seconds [later] you’re Quasimodo. I didn’t deserve that, nor did my children, nor did the people who have believed in me for all these years. I didn’t want any of those people to believe that I had done them wrong or lied to them or that I was a fraud. I pride myself on honesty.”

In his opening statement, Depp’s lawyer, Benjamin Chew, argued this narrative, saying, “For nearly 30 years, Mr. Depp built a reputation as one of the most talented actors in Hollywood, a respected artist whose name was associated with success at the box office. Today, his name is associated with a lie, a false statement uttered by his former wife.”

Over the course of his testimony, Depp said that his career reached new heights following his role in Pirates of the Caribbean, but that Disney cut ties with him less than a week after Heard published her op-ed. Heard’s lawyer, Ben Rottenborn, argued that any professional misfortune was Depp’s own doing. “Johnny Depp's reputation is in tatters,” Rottenborn said. “His career is in free fall, but it’s because of problems that he created, problems that he is responsible for. And he’s here in court asking you to blame Amber for them, but it’s not Amber's fault. They’re from the choices that he made.”

During cross-examination, Rottenborn referred to an October 2018 Daily Mail article reporting that Depp was out as Jack Sparrow—published two months before his client’s op-ed appeared in The Washington Post. “I wasn’t aware of that, but it doesn’t surprise me,” Depp testified. “Two years had gone by of constant worldwide talk about me being this wife beater. So I’m sure that Disney was trying to cut ties to be safe. The #MeToo movement was in full swing at that point,” he said, referring to Heard’s initial restraining order against him in 2016.

Depp’s position in the Pirates movies was not the only project affected by the allegations. He was released from his commitments to the Fantastic Beasts franchise after losing a libel case in which grim details emerged against The Sun, which had called Depp a “wife-beater,” in 2020. Variety reported at the time that AT&T’s merger with Warner Bros.’ parent company, Time Warner, led to less tolerance for “courting mercurial—but historically popular—talent like Depp.” Warner Bros. replaced Depp with Mads Mikkelsen in the recently released third installment of Fantastic Beasts but paid Depp his full $16 million salary after his having shot just one scene. 

During an interview with U.K.’s Sunday Times last August, Depp claimed that Hollywood had boycotted him, citing the long-delayed release of his film Minamata. The film, in which he plays American photojournalist W. Eugene Smith, received a paltry theatrical release earlier this year after being shelved for more than a year.

“It’s such a remarkable thing, because [Depp] felt perhaps like he was doing something to preserve his reputation or his marketability, but his actions have produced a complete opposite result,” Evan Nierman, founder of Red Banyan, which specializes in crisis P.R., told Vanity Fair ahead of the defamation trial.“Which is part of what makes this whole thing so fascinating.”

During closing statements on Depp’s second day of testimony, the disgraced actor said his standing in Hollywood would likely not recover. “I’ll put it to you this way: No matter the outcome of this trial, the second the allegations were made against me, the accusations, the second that more and more of these things as I said metastasized and turned into fodder for the media, once that happens or once that happened, I lost then,” he said, later adding, “I’ll carry that for the rest of my days.”

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