Paul Bettany says he has not spoken to Johnny Depp since text messages surfaced

British actor Paul Bettany has said he has not spoken to Johnny Depp since their private text messages became public during the legal dispute involving Depp and British newspaper The Sun.

British actor Paul Bettany has said he has not spoken to Johnny Depp since their private text messages became public during the legal dispute involving Depp and British newspaper The Sun.

In an interview with The Times, Bettany said he had not been in contact with Depp for years before the messages came to light and had not spoken to him since.

“I hadn’t spoken to Johnny in years when that happened and I haven’t spoken to him since,” Bettany said.

He said he was uncomfortable with being portrayed as a close friend of Depp during the controversy, given their lack of recent contact.

“I was being painted as this close friend of a guy I hadn’t spoken to in years and, honestly, amid all the s*** two celebrities threw at each other, that bit was the most odd,” he said.

Bettany said he chose not to comment publicly at the time, adding that he believed his personal life and reputation spoke for themselves.

“So I decided to say nothing because, I think, people know me. I’ve been married 23 years and, for what I do, I live an incredibly quiet life,” he said.

“Everybody kind of thought this is probably a nothing burger – and left it alone,” he added.

The messages, exchanged in 2013, included Depp discussing burning and drowning Amber Heard, his then-partner. They became public during Depp’s 2020 libel case against The Sun’s publisher, News Group Newspapers, over a 2018 article that described him as a “wife beater”.

The High Court dismissed Depp’s claim in November 2020, finding the newspaper had shown its allegation to be substantially true. The Court of Appeal refused Depp permission to appeal in March 2021.

Bettany had previously discussed the experience in an interview with The Independent in December 2021, describing the disclosure of his private messages as unsettling.

“It was a strange moment,” he said. “What was strange about it was you suddenly have one of the most scabrous newspapers in London and their lawyers pouring through your texts for the last 10 years.”

“Can you imagine what it would be like, honestly, to have a bunch of lawyers go through every one of your emails and texts for 10 years? All I can tell you is that it was an unpleasant feeling,” he added.