Amber Heard has settled with ex-husband Johnny Depp in his defamation lawsuit, and will pay him one million dollars.
Heard, 36, will cough up the seven-figure sum to put an end to their acrimonious courtroom wrangling that began shortly after they split in 2016.
Heard made the announcement in an Instagram post on Monday, which comes about six months after a Virginia jury found that she acted with actual malice in issuing false statements about Depp abusing her during their relationship.
“It’s important for me to say that I never chose this,” Heard said on Monday. “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 in which women are re-victimised when they come forward.”
“After a great deal of deliberation, I have made a very difficult decision to settle the defamation case brought against me by my ex-husband in Virginia,” she added.
“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,” Heard said in her statement.
“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.”
The “Danish Girl” star said she agreed to the deal “having lost faith in the American legal system.”
She compared the U.S. trial to Depp’s lawsuit against the Sun newspaper for branding him a “wife-beater,” which he lost. Heard testified on behalf of the publisher, and her allegations of abuse were substantiated.
Depp accused Heard of libel for a 2018 Washington Post op-ed she wrote about sexual violence, though she didn’t mention the “Pirates of the Caribbean” star by name in the piece.
