Paul Bettany Says He Has Not Spoken to Johnny Depp in Years

Paul Bettany is clarifying the state of his relationship with Johnny Depp after private messages between the actors became a prominent part of Depp’s legal battles with Amber Heard.

In an interview published October 15, Bettany said he had not spoken to Depp for years when the messages resurfaced and has not spoken to him since. He also pushed back on the idea that the two were close friends at that point, describing that portrayal as one of the strangest parts of the public controversy.

Why the old messages returned to public view

The actors worked together on The Tourist, Transcendence and Mortdecai. Their private exchange, which included violent jokes about Heard, was introduced during Depp’s 2020 libel case against the publisher of The Sun. The messages received renewed attention during the 2022 U.S. defamation trial between Depp and Heard.

Bettany told the interviewer that he chose not to issue a public defense at the height of the dispute. His reasoning was that his long marriage to Jennifer Connelly and generally private life gave audiences enough context to judge him without another celebrity statement entering an already intense news cycle.

He has discussed the experience before. In an earlier interview, Bettany described the prospect of lawyers reviewing years of personal communications as deeply unpleasant. His latest comments, however, focus less on the contents of the exchange than on what he says was an inaccurate impression of an ongoing friendship.

A carefully drawn boundary

The remarks do not attempt to relitigate the former couple’s cases. Instead, Bettany draws a firm boundary around his present relationship with Depp: former co-stars who have not remained in contact.

That distinction matters because the messages have continued to follow Bettany in profiles years after both trials concluded. By addressing the timeline directly, the VisionQuest actor is offering his clearest account yet of why he stayed quiet and where the relationship stands now.