Ahead of the one-year anniversary of the June 1, 2022 decision that forced Amber Heard to pay $10.35 million in damages to ex-husband Johnny Depp after their highly-publicized – and criticized – live-televised, six-week trial, the actress is starting over.
The star has kept a low profile since the summer 2022 trial, which took place in Fairfax County, Virginia, and concluded when a seven-person jury found that she defamed Johnny in her 2018 Washington Post op-ed about domestic violence.
The former couple met on the set of The Rum Diary in 2009, and started dating in 2012. They got engaged in 2014, subsequently married in 2015, though she filed for divorce in 2016 after 15 months of marriage, and they reached a $7 million divorce settlement in August 2016.
MORE: Amber Heard releases statement over settlement in Johnny Depp defamation case
She has since left Hollywood, and has reportedly started a new life in Madrid, Spain, along with her daughter, Oonagh Paige. Though she has not made a return to public life since her tell-all interview with Today’s Savannah Guthrie, which aired days after the trial concluded, she did say at the time she was looking forward to becoming a full-time mom.
Her two-year-old was born via surrogacy in April 2021 and the identity of her father remains a mystery, though many have suspected it is Elon Musk after his 2020 legal battle over his and Amber’s frozen embryos. The two started dating in 2017, though by 2018 they had called it quits.
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Though Amber was born and raised in Austin, Texas, and her connection to the Spanish capital is unclear, her total fluency in Spanish was revealed in a newly resurfaced video circling on Twitter.
© InstagramThe clip is from a past appearance on the talk show Un Nuevo Día (A New Day) which airs on Telemundo, and sees her talking about Aquaman – the first of which premiered in 2018 and she stars in it as Mera alongside Jason Momoa – with the show’s hosts comfortably in perfect Spanish, and even using Spanish slang.
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The last fans heard from Amber was from an Instagram post on December 19, 2022, when she announced the “difficult decision” to settle the defamation case brought against her by ex-husband.
© Getty“It’s important for me to say that I never chose this,” she wrote at the time, adding: “I defended my truth and in doing so my life as I knew it was destroyed. The vilification I have faced on social media is an amplified version of the ways women are re-victimised when they come forward.
“Now I finally have an opportunity to emancipate myself from something I attempted to leave over six years ago and on terms I can agree to,” she further said, explaining: “I have made no admission. This is not an act of concession. There are no restrictions or gags with respect to my voice moving forward. I make this decision having lost faith in the American legal system, where my unprotected testimony served as entertainment and social media fodder.”
© GettyShe further said: “I exhausted almost all my resources in advance of and during a trial in which I was subjected to a courtroom in which abundant, direct evidence that corroborated my testimony was excluded and in which popularity and power mattered more than reason and due process.”
Amber concluded her statement by thanking her judicial team for the growing support from not only fans, but fellow survivors of domestic abuse. “I cannot find enough words to tell you the hope your belief in me inspires, not just for me, but for all of you,” she wrote, ending with: “Thank you. See you soon.”
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