Johnny Depp's career and finances were already on the decline before Amber Heard's 2018 domestic violence charges, witnesses in the actor's defamation lawsuit against his ex-wife said Thursday.

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Johnny Depp "became the biggest movie star in the world" before "his star withered" from drugs and alcohol, said Tracey Jacobs, who was his agent for 30 years, before to be dismissed in October 2016.

"It got a lot more complicated" because of "his unprofessional attitude," she said in pre-recorded testimony broadcast in court in Fairfax, near Washington.

"He was constantly late to just about every movie" he was doing, she explained.

"Teams don't like to wait hours for the star of the film to show up and the word got around (...), that made people reluctant to use it," said the agent.

According to her, his drug and alcohol use also made him more angry and handicapped him in his acting work. He regularly used an earpiece to have someone whisper his lines to him, noted Ms. Jacobs. She claimed to have never witnessed violent acts by the actor.

Episode 5 of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” saga, filmed in Australia in 2015, had been interrupted for several weeks because Johnny Depp had been hospitalized for having severed his finger during an argument with his wife which had degenerated into particularly sordid sexual assault.

The actor claims to have been injured by a bottle thrown by his wife, which she strongly denied.

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Johnny Depp accuses Amber Heard of having ruined her reputation and her career by having claimed in a column published in 2018 by the Washington Post that she had suffered domestic violence two years earlier, when they were married, without however citing her name.

He assures that these allegations pushed the Disney studios to deprive him of the role of the famous captain Jack Sparrow for the 6th opus of "Pirates" which he was to turn.

But, underlined Tracey Jacobs, “no one had committed to him having the role”.

By 2016, "his star had faded and it was getting harder and harder to get him roles because of his reputation," she said.

The previous year, he had received 25 million dollars to shoot "Pirates 5" but only 5 million for "Murder on the Orient Express" released in 2017, she said.

Johnny Depp, however, continued to live at great expense, said his former wealth manager Joel Mandel, who had accompanied him since 1999 before being sacked in 2016.

According to him, Johnny Depp earned around $600 million during that time.

But from 2010, Johnny Depp's career stumbled with "several sequel movies that didn't pan out," he explained in his pre-recorded testimony.

In 2015, he was "extremely worried" about the actor's financial situation. "Over time it was clear that there were problems with alcohol and drugs," he said. "That was translating into a more erratic attitude."

Treatment for his drug addiction cost $100,000 a month and he paid his full-time staff $300,000 a month, he noted.

Deliberations are due to continue until May 27, after which the seven jurors will retire to deliberate.

The two actors had started an affair in October 2011 before getting married in February 2015. Amber Heard, 36, filed for divorce in May 2016, accusing her husband of domestic violence. She had dropped the charges before the divorce was finalized in early 2017.

Johnny Depp, who claims to have never raised his hand on a woman, already lost a first defamation lawsuit in London in 2020, against the British tabloid The Sun, which had called him a "violent husband".