A self-portrait of actor Johnny Depp at the Castle Fine Art Gallery in London, Britain, on July 19, 2023. Image: Reuters/Ben Makori
LONDON (AP) — A self-portrait of Johnny Depp went on sale Thursday showing the Hollywood star as he was between trials related to his marriage to ex-wife Amber Heard.
Conceived in 2021 in the studio of British illustrator Ralph Steadman, the artwork dubbed “Five” was completed this year.
“This self-portrait, it was created at a time that was… let’s say a little bit dark, a little bit confusing,” Depp said in a video.
“I looked at it and I don’t know why, I thought I needed something else. I needed more information… Basically, I just wrote five in there because I was about to enter my fifth year of madness.”
Depp married Heard, whom he met on the set of the movie “The Rum Diary,” in 2015. Just over a year later, she filed for divorce.
Their stormy relationship was exposed in two trials.
Last year, a US jury handed Depp a near victory in his defamation trial with Heard, who had accused him of abuse. Depp denied hitting her or any other woman.
Two years earlier, Depp lost a libel suit in Britain against the Sun tabloid, which called him a “wife beater”. A London High Court judge ruled that Depp had repeatedly assaulted Heard. He was soon written out of the “Harry Potter” spin-off franchise, “Fantastic Beasts.”
Depp said “Five” was inspired by a photograph of him taken in 2015 when he became the face of a Dior men’s perfume.
“All that time, as much as it was painful, Dior stood their ground and that was amazing,” Depp said in the video.
“Five” follows Depp’s portraits in his “Friends & Heroes” collection, depicting the likes of Elizabeth Taylor, Al Pacino, Bob Dylan and Keith Richards, sold by Castle Fine Art, a British retail art gallery group.
Priced at $1,950, the self-portrait is a limited-time edition, on sale for 13 days. Depp said $200 of the proceeds from each sale would be donated to the nonprofit Mental Health America. access point/ra
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