Since their divorce more than five years ago, fans have wanted to know the truth about claims Amber Heard cheated on Johnny Depp with Elon Musk and what the real timeline of their relationship was.
Depp and Heard met in 2009 while filming their 2011 movie, The Rum Diary. “That moment, was, it was, it felt like something, it felt like something I should not be feeling,” Depp recalled of a shower kissing scene between him and Heard at a court hearing in 2022. “I think there was something in the kiss in the shower that was real.” The two reunited at the promotional tour for The Rum Diary in 2011. Depp and Heard started dating after his 2012 breakup with Vanessa Paradis. They got engaged in 2014. “Of course they couldn’t be happier to be engaged and excited to share the rest of their lives together,” a source told People at the time. “Amber has really taken well to the kids and really enjoys spending time with them. And she’s even taken Lily shopping on her own for some bonding time.”
The two married in 2015. After 15 months of marriage, Heard filed for divorce in 2016. She obtained a temporary restraining order against Depp, claiming that he abused her while under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Depp denied the accusations, and a $7 million settlement was reached out of court in August 2016. Heard pledged to donate the money to the ACLU and the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. “Our relationship was intensely passionate and at times volatile, but always bound by love. Neither party has made false accusations for financial gain. There was never any intent of physical or emotional harm,” the two aid in a joint statement at the time.
In 2018, Heard wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post about her experience with domestic abuse. While she didn’t mention Depp by name, many believed that the post was about her ex-husband. Depp sued Heard for $50 million for defamation in 2019, claiming that the op-ed cost him acting jobs, including his role in Walt Disney Pictures’ Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. The trial for the case started in 2022, but three years before that, Depp accused Heard of cheating on him with her boyfriend, Elon Musk, whom she dated publicly after their divorce. Did Amber Heard cheat on Johnny Depp with Elon Musk? Read on for what we know about the timeline of their relationship.
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Did Amber Heard cheat on Johnny Depp?
Did Amber Heard cheat on Johnny Depp? Depp accused Heard of cheating on him with Elon Musk in his defamation lawsuit in March 2019. Depp claimed in the lawsuit that Heard and Musk started their affair in March 2015, a month after Depp and Heard married. “Unbeknownst to Mr. Depp, no later than one month after his marriage to Ms. Heard, she was spending time in a new relationship with Tesla and Space X founder, Elon Musk,” the legal documents read. “Only one calendar month after Mr. Depp and Ms. Heard were married—while Mr. Depp was out of the country, filming in March 2015—Eastern Columbia Building personnel testified that Ms. Heard received Musk ‘late at night’ at Mr. Depp’s penthouse. Specifically, Ms. Heard asked staff at the Eastern Columbia Building to give her ‘friend Elon’ access to the building’s parking garage and the penthouse elevator ‘late at night,’ and they testified that they did so. Building staff would then see Ms. Heard’s ‘friend Elon’ leaving the building the next morning.”
Depp’s attorneys also claimed in the lawsuit that Musk’s first time at Depp’s home with Heard was after the “severed finger” incident of March 2015, when Depp lost the tip of his finger. Depp claims that Heard threw a vodka bottle at him, which severed his finger, while Heard claims that she wasn’t awake at the time of the injury and that Depp assaulted her with the vodka bottle that same night. “Musk’s first appearance in Mr. Depp’s penthouse occurred shortly after Ms. Heard threw a vodka bottle at Mr. Depp in Australia, when she learned that Mr. Depp wanted the couple to enter into a post-nuptial agreement concerning assets in their marriage,” the legal documents read. “Ms. Heard’s violently aimed projectile virtually severed Mr. Depp’s middle finger on his right hand and shattered the bones. Mr. Depp’s marriage to Ms. Heard came to an end in May 2016.”
Texts between Heard and Musk were also read aloud at a 2020 court hearing over Depp defamation case against Heard. In the texts, Heard told Musk that she wanted a restraining order against Depp for an alleged domestic violence incident the day before. Musk responded by offering her “24/7” security. The text continued, “The offer would stand, even if you never wanted to see me again… anyway, sorry for being an idiot. The radio silence hurts a lot. It only matters because I really like you.”
At another court hearing in 2020, Josh Drew—the ex-husband of Heard’s best friend Raquel “Rocky” Pennington who also lived rent-free in a home owned by Depp—claimed that Heard had a threesome with Musk and Cara Delevingne when she was still married to Depp. “Did she ever tell you in words or substance while Amber was still married to Johnny Depp that the three of them, Amber Heard, Elon Musk and Cara Delevingne spent the night together?’” attorney Benjamin Chew asked, to which Drew responded, “Yes. To the specific date, I can’t say.” Chew continued, “So they were having a three-way affair, correct?” Drew responded, “My understanding, yes.”
So…did Amber Heard cheat on Johnny Depp with Elon Musk? According to Musk, the answer is no. A representative for Musk denied that he had a threesome with Delevingne and Heard in a statement to to Page Six in June 2020. “Cara and I are friends, but we’ve never been intimate. She would confirm this,” he said. “Also, I wish to confirm again that Amber and I only started going out about a month after her divorce filing. I don’t think I was ever even in the vicinity of Amber during their marriage!” He continued, “Regarding this lawsuit, I would recommend that everyone involved bury the hatchet and move on. Life is too short for such extended negativity. Nobody is going to say, after it’s all over, that they wished the court battle had lasted longer!”
In April 2022, a representative for Musk also denied Depp’s claim that Heard cheated with him. In a statement at the time, Musk claimed that he and Heard didn’t start dating until May 2016, the same month Heard filed for divorce from Depp for irreconcilable differences. “Elon and Amber didn’t start seeing each other until May 2016, and even then it was infrequent,” the representative said in a statement. “Their relationship didn’t become romantic until some time later.” The statement came around the time Musk’s attorney, Alex Spiro, also told E! News that the Tesla founder—who was listed as a potential witness for Heard in pre-trial filings for the case—would not be testifying at Heard and Depp’s trial.
Musk broke his silence on Heard and Depp’s recent trial in a tweet in May 2022, in which he called both parties “incredible.” “I hope they both move on. At their best, they are each incredible,” Musk tweeted in response to a Twitter user who listed their takeaways from Heard and Depp’s trial.
During their defamation trial in May 2022, Heard also claimed that Depp accused her of cheating with James Franco. Franco and Heard starred together in 2008’s Pineapple Express and 2015’s The Adderall Diaries, which she filmed while she was still married to Depp. “He was mad at me for taking a job with James Franco,” Heard said of Depp’s reaction to her and Franco, calling the time of their relationship a “nightmare.” “He hated, hated James Franco and was already accusing me of having a secret thing with him in my past because we had done Pineapple Express together.” She continued, “If I wasn’t explicit about what I was going to do, I was accused of having withheld information and hiding it from him.” Heard also testified that, when she told Depp about one of her intimate scenes with Franco on the phone prior to boarding a flight with Depp for his daughter Lily-Rose Depp’s birthday, Depp became upset and “didn’t sound coherent.”
Heard told the court that she knew “something was wrong” as soon as Depp boarded the plane. When they saw each other, Heard said that Depp walked over to her and started to question her about if she had kept any information a secret about her scenes with Franco. “I already know he’s drunk. I already know he’s using. He reeks of weed and alcohol. His breath smelled so bad and I could anticipate that it was a no-win situation,” she said of Depp. “Eventually it went from, ‘Do you have something to tell me?’ to ‘Do you wanna tell me how much you liked it? Tell me did he slip a tongue?’ It got worse. He was saying really disgusting things.”
When she got up and walked to the front of the plane, Heard testified that Depp threw things at her, walked up to her, slapped her in the face and kicked her. “I felt this boot in my back. He just kicked me in the back. I fell to the floor. I caught myself on the floor and felt like I was looking at the floor of the plane for what felt like a long time,” she said. Heard also claimed during the trial that Franco visited her apartment late at night after a fight she had with Depp because she had “exhausted” her support network of other friends. “Because he was my friend and he lived next door, quite literally next door,” Heard said of the reason for Franco’s visit. “And I quite literally exhausted my support network with my usual friends, and I was happy to welcome as much friendship at that time as I could possibly get.” Heard also explained a video from the night of Franco laying his head on her shoulder. “After seeing my face, he put his head on my shoulder,” she said. “He touched the side of my face and responded to what he saw.”
Heard also claimed during the trial that Depp once accused her of cheating on him with Eddie Redmayne, whom she starred in 2015’s The Danish Girl with. “We communicated pretty consistently, and it was positive until it started to change,” Heard said. “I got the sense that he thought I was sleeping with the director [Tom Hooper], and then it was with the actor I was filming with.” When asked to specify the actor, Heard responded, “Eddie Redmayne.” Heard denied that she had an affair with either Hooper and Redmayne and claimed in court that Depp continued to call her hotel room in London, where she was filming The Danish Girl, to make sure she was there. “One day, right before I was supposed to fly to Australia [where Depp was filming], I think it was the night before I was supposed to leave to go to Australia, he calls my hotel room,” she said. “I had a sense the phone was ringing. I think I was in the shower at the time, but not much time had passed, and I get a knock on the door and it was someone from the hotel.” She went on to call Redmayne “lovely” and a “gentleman.”
Heard and Musk started dating publicly in July 2016 after they were first seen together at the Delano South Beach in Miami, Florida. The two starred together in the 2013 movie, Machete Kills, in which Heard played “Miss San Antonio” Bianca Vasquez and Musk made a cameo as himself. “Elon is attracted to her edginess. She isn’t frightened about being different,” a source told People in 2016. She doesn’t get easily intimidated. She is very focused and loves to learn.” The two split for the first time in August 2017 after less than a year of dating due to their busy schedules. “They had fun for a few months, but are both very busy with work now. It was getting hard to find time to see each other,” an insider told People at the time. adding that Musk initiated the split. “Elon’s is working day and night. This is his life and he loves it. He is in no position to be in a relationship right now and ended it.”
The two confirmed the breakup with their own statement. “All relationships have their ups and downs, of course. People occasionally send out speculation, which has no basis in fact, without our knowledge, believing that that they have our best interests in mind,” Heard and Musk said at the time. “Sometimes, other agendas are at work. It can get a little weird… However, we would like to state directly that we have the utmost respect for one another, and it would be troubling if anyone had the impression that we thought otherwise.” Musk also addressed the split on his Twitter, confirming there was still “love” between him and Heard. “Btw, just to clear up some of the press storms this weekend, although Amber and I did break up, we are still friends, remain close and love one another,” he tweeted at the time. “Long-distance relationships when both partners have intense work obligations are always difficult, but who knows what the future holds.”
Musk credited Heard for the breakup in an interview with Rolling Stone at the time. “I just broke up with my girlfriend. I was really in love, and it hurt bad… Well, she broke up with me more than I broke up with her, I think,” he said. Heard and Musk reunited five months later before ending their relationship a second time in February 2018 due to Heard wanting “independence.” “Amber wants her independence and prefers being friends rather than romantically linked,” a source told Us Weekly at the time. Another insider added, “Elon decided it was time to end things, and Amber agreed. They both care for one another, but the timing just isn’t right.”
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, help is available. Call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-SAFE (7233) for confidential support.
