Johnny Depp, Heard arrive for third day of UK libel trial

Actor Johnny Depp and his ex-wife, actress Amber Heard arrived at the High Court in London on Thursday for the third day of a three-week trial over his libel case against a British newspaper.

Depp is suing News Group Newspapers, publisher of The Sun, and the paper’s executive editor, Dan Wootton, over an April 2018 article that said he’d physically abused ex-wife Amber Heard.

The newspaper's lawyers plan to use Heard's allegations of abuse by Depp to defend the “wife beater” claim.

The trial opened on Tuesday.

It is one of the first major cases to be held in person since Britain began to lift its coronavirus lockdown.

Depp, 57, and Heard, 34, met on the set of the 2011 comedy “The Rum Diary” and married in Los Angeles in February 2015. They divorced in 2017 and now bitterly accuse one another of abuse.

While Heard isn't on trial, the case is also a showdown between the former spouses, who accuse each other of being controlling, violent and deceitful.

It is set to put the two performers’ complex private lives under a microscope.

Depp is also suing Heard in the United States for 50 million US dollars for allegedly defaming him in a Washington Post article about domestic abuse.

That case is due to be heard next year.