Here's What Johnny Depp Did With the $1 Million Received From Amber Heard in Defamation Settlement
Editor's note: This article was originally published on June 15, 2023. It has since been updated.
American musician and actor Johnny Depp made news again as he decided which organizations would receive the $1 million payout he is due from Amber Heard as a result of their widely publicized defamation trial.
As per CNN, Johnny Depp sued Amber Heard when she identified herself as a "public figure representing domestic abuse" in a 2018 op-ed that appeared in The Washington Post, though she did not specifically mention Depp by name. Heard had accused Depp of domestic violence before the trial. The jury found that Depp suffered "significantly more damage" in the case of defamation, leading to a legal win for the Pirates of the Caribbean actor.
According to a source quoted by CNN, the actor intends to give $200,000 to each of the five charities that he has selected. The Make-A-Film Foundation, The Painted Turtle, Red Feather, Marlon Brando's Tetiaroa Society charity, and the Amazonia Fund Alliance are the five charities Depp has selected to receive the settlement monies, the source revealed. CNN has reached out to Heard's representatives seeking comment on the development.
A Virginia jury found both Heard and Depp liable for defamation in June 2022. The former couple later came to a settlement in December with Heard agreeing to pay Depp $1 million in damages. Depp promised to give the money from the Heard settlement to charity, according to a statement from his solicitors at the time.
More recently, Depp's lawyer Camille Vasquez had explained, "Ms. Heard did pay Mr. Depp, not the other way around. I want to make that very, very clear. The judgment still stands. It will always still stand for the remainder of time. And Mr. Depp will be donating the money to several charities that Ms. Heard paid to settle the appeal. Case closed, and we couldn't be happier about it for him in the best possible way. And, again, the most important thing to us and to him was that the judgment would stand."
Depp had originally received a $10 million compensatory damage award and a $5 million punitive damage award from the Virginia jury in June 2022. Heard received a $2 million compensatory damages award but no punitive damages compensation.
In the end, when the former couple reached a settlement agreement in December, the damages that Heard owed to Depp were decreased to $1 million. Heard announced the settlement at the time in a statement on her verified Instagram page, claiming that she had "made no admission" and that the agreement was "not an act of concession." Heard stated in her post, “I make this decision having lost faith in the American legal system, where my unprotected testimony served as entertainment and social media fodder."
At the time, Camille Vasquez and Benjamin Chew, Depp's attorneys, said in a statement to CNN, “We are pleased to formally close the door on this painful chapter for Mr. Depp, who made clear throughout the process that his priority was about bringing the truth to light.”
