MOVIE NEWS – So it wasn’t Amber Heard’s article that sent him off the rails?

The Johnny Depp v Amber Heard case will surely go down in history as one of the biggest scandals in film history, with the latest trial still ongoing in Virginia. In it, Heard has claimed, among other things, that Depp’s smear campaign in Aquman 2 led to her being cut from her role, while the actor says his ex-wife’s 2018 “wife-beating article” is to blame for his blacklisting in Hollywood, although the agent of the Jack Sparrow star says Johnny Depp’s career was already doomed by his behaviour on set

Variety reported that Tracey Jacobs, a popular agent for the star agency United Talent Agency, gave sworn testimony in a Fairfax court Thursday in the form of a video message. Jacobs worked for Johnny Depp for 30 years until he fired him in 2016. The agent said that during their 10 years together back to 2016, Depp was regularly late for shoots, which gave him a bad reputation in Hollywood and made it much harder to get him work than before. According to Tracey Jacobs, though, he wasn’t rude to the cast and crew, in fact they loved him when he was willing to show up and work. “He was always great with the crew. But the professionals don’t really like it when they have to spend long hours sharpening oats because a star doesn’t arrive on time,” said Jacobs.

The agent also revealed that he was sometimes shouted at and had to hold his back, and that Johnny Depp had definitely consumed more drugs and alcohol in their last years together. According to Tracey Jacobs, although Depp was once one of the biggest stars in the world, in 2016 that could no longer be said of him. And then where was Amber Heard’s 2018 article? Jacobs claims that by 2016, it was a common phenomenon that professionals were whining behind the star’s back about his inability to act professionally on set, which is why they were reluctant to hire him for certain projects.

Amber Heard’s lawyers have also sent a video message to Joel Mandel, Johnny Depp’s former business manager, who has reported on Depp’s rampant spending. He claims that all hell broke loose after the very first Pirates of the Caribbean (2003), which is perhaps understandable, as it was a major contribution to Johnny Depp’s worldwide fame, after which everyone identified him with Captain Jack Sparrow. So from then on, the actor lived not on a big but on a giant foot, throwing money around, buying the most expensive things of everything. But this didn’t last forever, because many of his films didn’t do so well after that, and in 2015 Mandel had to warn the star to tighten his belt, as he wasn’t doing so well financially. He seemed to get it at first, but it didn’t really take, except that in 2016 he fired his financial manager and then sued him. Joel Mandel of course fought back, holding Depp responsible, not himself.

Tracey Jacobs added that Johnny Depp once approached his agency to lend him $20M, but was turned down as UTA is not a bank, but a star agency. Depp didn’t say at the time what he needed the money for, but he did say, offensive and defensive, that he had made the United Talent Agency very rich, so he was pretty much deserving of the help. The agency reportedly once helped the star get a loan from Bank of America. Jacobs, of course, has admitted that these lawsuits are not helping Johnny Depp’s declining reputation.

Also testifying were Tina Newman, a Disney production executive, and actress Ellen Barkin, with whom Johnny Depp had a brief sexual relationship in the 1990s. According to Newman, there was no talk among Disney’s senior decision-makers that the star would no longer appear in Pirates of the Caribbean because of the 2018 article by Amber Heard. And Barkin claimed that during their brief relationship in Las Vegas, the actor was often aggressive and jealous, asking where he was going, who he was meeting or had met the night before. Moreover, he even threw a wine bottle at the actress during one of their fights. Johnny Depp claims that Amber Heard hit him with a bottle during one of their fights.

Heard’s brother recently testified that Johnny Depp slapped Amber in front of her. Pirates of the Caribbean producer Jerry Bruckheimer has spoken out about whether his team is really finished with Depp.

Source: Variety