Amber Heard takes the stand in defamation trial against Johnny Depp

Amber Heard said she wanted her relationship with Johnny Depp to end during a period when is alleged to have fluctuated between active addiction and sobriety.

"In June, I wanted to leave him — I didn't want to leave. I wanted to want to leave him. I wanted him to get better," she said, her voice cracking with emotion. "And he expressed to me so many times when he was in that period of getting clean and sober: 'You saved my life. Baby girl, you saved my life.' Everyone else is saying that to me, and I believed it.'"

Heard said that she had hoped to have a life with Depp and that she believed that if she could get him sober, the rest of their lives together could begin.

"I looked at that man — twice my age; I was 25 — looking at this man ... I saw hope and, like, promise. I had so much hope. The whole thing, kids and growing old together. ... If it was just for this one thing he could do, which would save his life: to get clean and sober."

While on the witness stand, Amber Heard told the court that Johnny Depp accused her of stealing cocaine and conducted a cavity search of her while on a trip in the desert.

Heard said the couple had a fight during a trip with friends in May 2013 where they stayed in trailers in the desert. She and Depp went to their trailer after he was upset that a woman was leaning in and touching Heard, she said.

The woman was feeling the effects of a drug, MDMA, Heard said.

While in the trailer, Heard alleged that Depp began screaming at her and accused her of having an affair. She realized he was "probably really high" because he no longer made sense and Heard said she walked away.

"I went into the bathroom and as I come out, he asked me where it and how long I'd been hiding it," Heard said.

She told the court she told him she didn't know what he was talking about. He patted her down, ripped the front of her dress and her underwear, Heard said.

"He proceeds to do a cavity search," Heard said, her voice sounding strained. "He said he was looking his drugs - his cocaine, his coke. I was wondering how I, somebody who didn't do cocaine and was against it... how could I, why would I hide his drugs? Like he was insinuating I was doing it or something?"

The defense’s first witness, clinical psychologist Dawn Hughes, earlier on Wednesday mentioned that Heard had recounted an instance where she was searched for drugs by Depp during her testimony.

Amber Heard was asked to describe an image shown to the court of her with a bruised arm.

Heard said she sent the photo to her mom after an incident in which, she said, Johnny Depp hit her.

"He grabbed me by the arm and kind of just held me on the floor screaming at me. I don't know how many times he hit me in the face," she said. "I remember being on the floor of my apartment, and I remember thinking, 'How could this happen to me again?'"

Amber Heard recalled a fight with Johnny Depp in 2013, in which she said he became jealous over a picture her ex-partner had made. Heard said he accused her of infidelity because the picture was hanging in the home.

At one point, Depp became so incensed by the image that he tried to burn it with a Bic lighter but was unsuccessful because he was intoxicated at the time, Heard claimed.

"In these arguments, me walking away is [what he would consider] me leaving him. … It went from that to pulling me in by my arm. I was trying to defuse the situation by telling him I'm not sleeping with that person."

Heard said that as soon as she'd convince Depp she hadn't been unfaithful, he would accuse her of infidelity with another person. She described March 2013 as "almost like a never-ending fight."

Discussing that period, Heard told the court that Depp once backhanded her and said that because he wears "many rings," the slap felt like her "teeth went into" her lip and a little blood spattered onto the wall.

Amber Heard said she confided in her mother about her relationship with Johnny Depp starting from their early dating days.

"I couldn't tell any of my friends I was with him for a long time, because he told me everyone would blame me for the split with him and his partner, so I had to sneak around. ... It was very isolating," she said. "I confided with her [her mother] at the very beginning on that sort of thing."

Later, she said, she began opening up about the alleged abuse.

"At first I just wanted someone to talk to about how scary it was," she said. "The rage and the uncontrolled violence."

"I felt safe talking to my mom, because I knew she understood these dynamics and she wouldn't judge me for staying with him, for loving him, even though this was happening."

Amber Heard recounted the first time she said Johnny Depp had ever hit her as she was on the witness stand, getting emotional as she described him slapping her.

"I will never forget it," Heard said. "It changed my life."

In her testimony, Heard described how Depp's overwhelmingly loving and generous nature shifted in their relationship. She told the court that he began drinking again after some time abstaining from alcohol because of health issues. He wouldn't speak to Heard, and he would return seemingly angry after drinking, she said.

She described the first time she said he hit her as stupid — the two had been talking when she asked about a tattoo of his, she said. Heard said that she didn't know what it said and that he responded that it said "Wino."

"I just laughed, because I thought he was joking. And he slapped me across the face," Heard said. "And I laughed. I laughed, because I didn’t know what else to do. I thought, 'This must be a joke.'"

Heard said she believed in hindsight that Depp may have been high on cocaine, because there was a jar on the table, but she didn't see him take anything. She did say she knew he was drinking at the time.

Depp slapped her again, she said, after he told her, "You think you're a funny bitch." The third time he slapped her, Heard said, she fell on the carpet.

"I didn't want to have the man I was in love with, I know you don't come back from that," Heard said. "I'm not dumb. ... I knew it was wrong, and I knew that I had to leave him. And that's what broke my heart, because I didn't want to leave him."

Depp has denied hitting Heard, and he denied hitting her over his tattoo. He testified that Heard had taken issue with his "Wino forever" tattoo, which he modified after he broke up with his former girlfriend Winona Ryder.

Amber Heard said she fell hard for Johnny Depp in fall 2011 while they were promoting their film, “The Rum Diary.”

“I felt like this man knew me and saw me in a way that nobody else had," Heard told jurors. "He made me feel seen, made me feel like a million dollars. That kind of feeling where he just lavished gifts, lavished expressions of love, and how he’d never met a woman like me. I remember he took the foil off of this bottle and put it on my ring finger, and I had only been with him, like, days, maybe it was weeks at the time. It just felt very intense."

At the time, their relationship was not yet public because Depp was separating from Vanessa Paradis, his longtime partner and the mother of his two children, Heard said.

Amber Heard recounted her first meeting with Johnny Depp on the stand.

She described meeting with him for his film "The Rum Diary" in the late 2000s. She said that she thought it might be an audition but that it turned out to be a meeting. Heard said they clicked in a way she hadn't expected.

"We talked about books and music, poetry. We like a lot of the same stuff. Obscure writers and interesting books and pieces of poetry I haven't heard anyone else know or reference or like," she recalled.

She described Depp as "very well read and charismatic." Heard said she may have left his office with a few books he'd lent her.

"I knew who he was. I wasn’t a fan of his work. I wasn’t familiar with him, but I knew who he was. I knew he was one of the most famous people in the world," she said. "It was weird, because he’s twice my age and this famous actor, and here we are getting along about old books and the blues. I thought it was unusual and remarkable. I left there feeling, like, 'wow.'"

Eventually, Heard said, Depp called her and told her: "You're it. You're the dream, kid."

In his testimony, Depp recalled that he and Heard were “perfect partners” when they first met. He also felt wowed by her knowledge of what he called obscure blues music, and he called her “sweet” and “funny.”

Amber Heard took the stand to begin her witness statement once the court returned from a lunch break Wednesday afternoon.

In her opening statements, Heard said she struggled to find the words for the pain of sitting through the last 3½ weeks of the trial. She called it "the most painful and difficult thing I’ve ever gone through."

"This is horrible for me to sit here for weeks and 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."