Johnny Depp's libel trial against Amber Heard gets underway

Johnny Depp's libel trial against his ex-wife Amber Heard began in Virginia on Monday.

The trial, which is taking place at the Fairfax County Courthouse, kicked off with jury selection. Opening statements could be heard on Tuesday.

The hearing, which is being broadcast on U.S. TV, is expected to last six weeks and both Depp and Heard are slated to testify, with high-profile figures including James Franco, Paul Bettany, and Elon Musk also scheduled to give testimony on the witness stand.

According to Variety, a number of fans turned up to the courthouse early Monday in an effort to get a seat inside the hearing, and Judge Penney Azcarate has already banned spectators from camping outside the building overnight.

The Pirates of the Caribbean actor sued Heard for $50 million (£38 million) in 2019 after she wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post in 2018 in which she described herself as "a public figure representing domestic abuse". She did not identify her ex-husband by name.

Depp's lawyers accused the actress of orchestrating an elaborate hoax in order to derail his career, an allegation which led to her filing a $100 million (£77 million) counterclaim.

Addressing the trial on Instagram over the weekend, Heard told her followers that she is ready to move on.

"Hopefully when this case concludes, I can move on and so can Johnny. I have always maintained a love for Johnny and it brings me great pain to have to live out the details of our past life together in front of the world," she wrote.

This is the second legal action involving the former couple. Depp lost his libel case against The Sun newspaper in the U.K. in 2020 over a 2018 article that called him a "wife beater". Judge Andrew Nicol ruled that characterisation was "substantially true".

Depp, 58, and Heard, 35, were married between 2015 and 2017.