Amber Heard calls her trial 'the most painful and difficult' event in her life as she kicks off testimony against Johnny Depp

• Amber Heard began testifying for the defamation case Johnny Depp brought against her.
• She testified the ongoing trial is "the most painful and difficult thing" she's ever gone through.

Amber Heard began testifying Wednesday for a lawsuit brought by her ex-husband Johnny Depp, describing the trial as the worst experience in her life.

"This is horrible for me to have to sit here for weeks and have to relive everything," Heard said. "Hear people that I knew — some well some not — my ex-husband with whom I shared a life, speak about our lives in the way that they have. This is the most painful and difficult thing I have ever gone through."

Heard is the second witness her legal team called to the stand, following testimony from Dawn Hughes, a clinical and forensic psychologist.

Hughes, who evaluated Heard and reviewed therapeutic and legal records related to her, diagnosed the actress with post-traumatic stress disorder caused by "intimate partner violence" from Depp. Hughes said that, in therapeutic sessions, Heard recounted incidents where Depp physically beat her, performed a "cavity search," and penetrated her body with a glass bottle. Heard is expected to testify about those events on the stand.

The trial began in April over a lawsuit Depp filed in 2019 in the Fairfax County court in Virginia. He alleges that Heard defamed him when describing herself as a victim of domestic violence in a December 2018 Washington Post op-ed. He also alleged that she verbally and physically abused him throughout their relationship, not the other way around.

Heard denied the allegations and countersued, alleging Depp, while under the influence of drugs or alcohol, physically assaulted her repeatedly before and during their marriage, which ended in 2016.

For nearly all of the trial thus far, Depp's legal team has presented his side of the case. In sworn testimony, employees and friends of Depp, as well as medical professionals, depicted Heard as a manipulative liar who threw a glass bottle at him and severed his finger, faked a bruise on her face and PTSD symptoms, was jealous of his friends, threw his phone out the window, possibly pooped on their bed, and admitted to escalating to violence during arguments.

Depp personally took the stand for four days, describing how he was a pacifist whose career has been unfairly ruined by Heard's allegations. He said his text messages describing acts of violence toward Heard's body have been exaggerated or willfully misinterpreted, and that his legendary drinking and drug use was always under control.

The bad headlines resulting from Depp's witnesses' testimony reportedly frustrated Heard and led her to replace her public relations team shortly began she took the stand.

Heard, at the beginning of her testimony, talked about meeting Depp at the age of 22 when he was preparing "The Rum Diary" in 2011, when they first met. She said they bonded over the same books, poems, and obscure writers.

"He was very well-read and charismatic, and I think I left the office with a few books that he gave me," she said.

She said that when they filmed the movie in Puerto Rico, the two had a scene where they kiss. As Depp said in his own testimony earlier in the trial, the kiss transformed their relationship from a professional one to a personal one.

"When we had a kissing scene, it didn't feel like a job anymore," Heard said. "It felt real."

The two were each in other relationships at the time and didn't formally date until after the movie wrapped.

Depp, sitting with his lawyers at a table in front of Heard, didn't appear to look at his ex-wife as she testified. He looked down at his desk and seemed to be eating from a pile of gummy bears.