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Amber Heard's ex-assistant has accused the star of physically and mentally abusing her.

Kate James, who worked for the Aquaman star from 2012 to 2015, has gone on record to provide testimony about her time in the actress' employment as part of the legal battle between Heard and her ex-husband Johnny Depp.

According to legal documents obtained by The Blast, James claimed that the 33-year-old screen star was "regularly verbally and mentally abusive and would often scream at me in that way, over the smallest things."

"She would fly into blind rages where no-one could reason with her, and even if I was trying to offer an explanation, I didn't think that she could hear me as she was so angry," she continued. "It was like she thought regular things that can go wrong in any person's life on any given day didn't apply to her.

"Everything that went wrong was always my fault. I remember one occasion where she missed a connection on a flight on or around Christmas Day in 2012. My aunt was visiting from Australia at that time. She was screaming abuse at me for literally hours as though I had made it snow and caused the disruptions to the flight."

Elsewhere in her statement, James recalled the first time she met "softly spoken and peaceful" Depp, and added she found it "bizarre" when Heard started to try and "morph" herself into her other half.



"When I first visited Johnny's home, I couldn't believe how similar it was to what Amber was in the process of trying to create. It was almost identical," she explained in the testimony. "She threw away all paperback books and began curating an extensive collection of First Edition hardcover books (which I believe Johnny purchased for her at great expense). I found all this behaviour to be quite bizarre.

"When I first met Amber, her clothing style was what I would call preppy. Very soon afterwards, that also drastically changed, almost overnight, as she tried to morph into a bohemian way of dressing, wearing more and more silver jewellery, eventually adding a repertoire of hats, which also appeared to me to be mimicking Johnny's style."

Depp is suing Heard for defamation in Virginia for an op-ed she penned for The Washington Post in which she referred to herself as "a public figure representing domestic abuse".

He is demanding damages in excess of $50 million (£38.7 million).