Johnny Depp donates earnings from NFT sale to charity associated with Amber Heard

One of the four beneficiaries of the ‘nearly $800,000’ in proceeds was the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles

Johnny Depp has donated the proceeds from an NFT sale to four charities, including the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, which has ties to Amber Heard.

On Wednesday (6 July), Depp’s Never Fear Truth NFT (non-fungible token) platform announced that it had raised “nearly $800,000 (£666,530) in total donations” which was split between four organisations.

The tweet went on to name the beneficiaries: “Perth Children’s Hospital Foundation (via CAF America), Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity (via CAF America), The Footprint Coalition, [and] the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles.”

Of the four beneficiary charities, the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles has been associated with Depp’s ex-wife Heard.

During the estranged couple’s recent defamation trial, it was revealed Heard had failed to donate her $7m (£5.8m) divorce payout from Depp as she had pledged to do in 2016.

One of the two charities Heard said she would split the settlement between was the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. The other was the American Civil Liberties Union.

After the announcement of Depp’s NFT sale, fans praised The Pirates of the Caribbean actor for his “never-ending kindness”.

Alluding to the trial, one person wrote: “And this, ladies and gentlemen, is philanthropy. And the difference between an unfulfilled pledge, and a straight donation. PS Pledges most often have a schedule for fulfilment. And a signed pledge vehicle. I’m certain these organizations are very grateful.”

Heard was subjected to intense under cross-examination from Depp’s attorney Camille Vasquez during the trial when she claimed she had been unable to honour those pledges because of legal costs from her ex-husband suing her.

The Aquaman star also said she used the word “pledged” and “donated” interchangeably, and then separately compared making the donations to buying a house through mortgage payments over time.

“I pledged the entirety to charity. When you say you buy a house, you don’t pay for the entire house at one time. You pay it over time,” she said at the time.

An anonymous juror in the defamation trial opposing Depp and Heard previously said the revelation that she did not donate the divorce settlement to charity as she’d claimed was “a fiasco” in the eyes of the jury.

Amber Heard speaks out for the first time since the trial in an interview with Savannah Guthrie on US TV (NBC)

Depp sued his ex-wife for defamation over a 2018 op-ed for The Washington Post where she described herself as a victim of domestic abuse and spoke of feeling “the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out”.

Heard countersued Depp for $100m (£83m) for “orchestrating a smear campaign” against her.

Delivering its verdict, a jury of seven determined that Heard had defamed Depp on all three counts. Depp was awarded $10m in compensatory damages and $5m in punitive damages, which were later reduced to the state’s legal limit of $350,00.

Heard won one of her three counterclaims, with the jury finding that Depp – via his lawyer Adam Waldman – defamed her by branding her allegations about a 2016 incident “an ambush, a hoax”.

“Do you think to the jurors sitting there, that was you getting caught in a lie?” asked Savannah Guthrie, during Heard’s interview with the NBC host on US TV last month, referring to her testimony about the donations.

In response, Heard said the trial was used to try to paint her as “a liar”, arguing that she shouldn’t have had to pledge her entire settlement in the first place for people to believe her accusations of abuse against Depp.

Meanwhile, Depp has seemingly criticised Heard on a new album he’s releasing with musician Jaeff Beck.