Amber Heard pays Johnny Depp $1 million settlement a year after trial

'Pirates of the Caribbean' star will donate the money to charities

Johnny Depp and Amber Heard testifying during their defamation case in Virginia, 2022. AP

Actress Amber Heard has made her $1 million settlement to former husband Johnny Depp one year after their defamation case against each other.

Depp plans to split the settlement evenly among five charities, media outlets reported.

A Virginia jury last year found that Heard and Depp had both defamed each other. Depp was originally awarded $10 million in compensatory damages and an additional $5 million in punitive damages. Heard was awarded $2 million in compensatory damages.

Heard's damages owed to Depp were reduced to $1 million after they came to a settlement agreement in December. Heard wrote that she made the “very difficult decision” to settle the case.

In an Instagram post at the time, Heard said the settlement was “not an act of concession”.

“I defended my truth and in doing so my life as I knew it was destroyed,” she wrote.

“The vilification I have faced on social media is an amplified version of the ways in which women are re-victimised when they come forward.”

Lawyers for Depp at the time said the actor was glad to end this “painful chapter” of his life.