Amber Heard and Johnny Depp Are Back in Court


Amber Heard and Johnny Depp.
Photo-Illustration: The Cut. Photos: Getty Images

Amber Heard and Johnny Depp are back in court, another installment in the heated legal volley that began in 2016. This time around, the catalyzing issue is an op-ed Heard wrote for the Washington Post in 2018 identifying herself as a survivor of sexual violence whose career suffered when she named a powerful man in Hollywood as her abuser. Heard did not mention Depp directly, but given how publicly the actors’ divorce played out and how central Heard’s allegations of domestic violence were to the proceedings, most readers would have filled in the blank. Depp then sued Heard for defamation, and she sued back, and now their trial is under way in Virginia’s Fairfax County Circuit Court. Below, a timeline of the current case and how they got here.

Heard and Depp met on the set of The Rum Diary and began dating by 2012, after he separated from his partner of 14 years, Vanessa Paradis, and she broke up with her partner, Tasya van Ree. The actors married in early 2015, and despite many assurances from unnamed tabloid sources that everything was “great” and “they are great together,” Heard filed for divorce 15 months later. Depp greeted this news with a terse public statement: “Given the brevity of this marriage and the most recent and tragic loss of his mother, Johnny will not respond to any of the salacious false stories, gossip, misinformation and lies about his personal life. Hopefully the dissolution of this short marriage will be resolved quickly.”

This was May 2016. The couple had already weathered a whole international dog-smuggling drama by this point, and the gossip magazines quickly got to work on possible motives for the divorce. They floated alleged familial animosity, Ben Affleck, and different life phases (when they got together, she would have been around 25 and he would’ve been about 48) as possible reasons for the split, but the real one emerged in court filings: “There was one severe incident in December 2015 when I truly feared for my life,” Heard wrote in her documents, arriving in court with bruises on her face. (People published photos of the injuries too.) Depp allegedly threw an iPhone at her head during an argument days before, and Heard wanted a restraining order against him, having already filed a police report. And so began a very nasty, very public divorce.

According to Heard, Depp routinely became explosively angry and physically violent throughout their relationship, particularly when substances were involved. Her filings framed the iPhone incident as a repeat event, alleging that Depp subjected her to “excessive emotional, verbal and physical abuse” as well as “angry, hostile, humiliating and threatening assaults.” Heard said she had photos and video to support her statements — and breaking from its apparent support of Depp, TMZ eventually leaked footage from Heard’s cell phone showing the Pirates of the Caribbean star raging at his wife. Text messages came out, too, in which Depp’s assistant — Stephen Deuters — apologizes on the actor’s behalf for having kicked Heard the night before. “He’s done this many times before,” she wrote back. “Tokyo, the island, London (remember that?!), and I always stay. Always believe he’s going to get better … And then every 3 or so month [sic], I’m in the exact same position.”

Heard also declined spousal support from Depp, emphasizing that, contrary to what his lawyers suggested in the media, the case wasn’t about money for her. And while certain tabloid reports (TMZ’s, for example) seemed to suggest Heard had faked her facial injuries, her friend, photographer and writer iO Tillett Wright, came out with an emphatic defense. “BULLS–T,” he wrote in a lengthy Twitter thread. “I’ve had enough. I saw the bruises. Many times. And the fat lip. And the cut head.” Further, Tillett Wright said he’d experienced and witnessed Depp’s rage firsthand, asking: “How much evidence does a woman need to present?! She has photos, texts, witnesses, and filed a restraining order.” And regarding the photos: Oh, boy.

After issuing his icy statement, Depp avoided commenting on the situation, leaving it to his lawyers to hash out in court. But despite the actor’s silence, there was still a push to discredit Heard in gossip rags: TMZ, for example, published audio from a 2009 court hearing that followed Heard’s arrest for allegedly assaulting van Ree, her former partner. Heard allegedly grabbed Ree’s arm and struck her while at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, an incident van Ree said had been “misinterpreted and over-sensationalized by two individuals in a power position” (i.e., the police). Responding to the resurfaced arrest, van Ree said that Heard had been “wrongfully accused,” adding: “It’s disheartening that Amber’s integrity and story are being questioned yet again. Amber is a brilliant, honest and beautiful woman and I have the utmost respect for her.”

In subsequent litigation, Depp stringently denied Heard’s claims, but by mid-August 2016, the pair reached a settlement. “Our relationship was intensely passionate and at times volatile, but always bound by love,” they said in a joint statement. “Neither party has made false accusations for financial gains. There was never an intent of physical or emotional harm. Amber wishes the best for Johnny in the future.” Once Depp finally paid her, Heard donated the sum to charity, splitting it between the division of the ACLU that combats violence against women and the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. The settlement also required her to withdraw the restraining order and the abuse case with the stipulation that she could never refile it. Unfortunately, though, it did not end the larger dispute.

In 2018, Depp sued News Group Newspapers, Ltd., after one of its titles — The Sun — referred to him as a “wife beater.” As the BBC notes, U.K. law obligates the party accused of committing defamation to prove their claims, which arguably should’ve made the case easier for Depp to win. The trial once again turned the spotlight on 14 instances of abuse Heard says occurred between 2013 and 2016. Depp denied all of it, turning the accusations back on his ex-wife: He said that she, or possibly one of her friends, defecated in his bed. He said that she would regularly fly into violent rages, once cutting off his finger tip when she threw a liquor bottle at him. He said that she was “a calculating, diagnosed borderline personality; she is sociopathic; she is a narcissist; and she is completely emotionally dishonest.” He enlisted his former partner Paradis and ex Winona Ryder as character witnesses. But, ultimately, he lost the case in July 2020.

In his ruling, the judge agreed that on multiple occasions, Depp seemed to have placed Heard in “fear for her life.” That decision also highlighted some depraved texts from the actor to other members of the industry. To Heard’s former agent, he once wrote that she was “begging for total global humiliation. She’s gonna get it … I have no mercy, no fear and not an ounce of emotion or what I once thought was love for this gold digging, low level, dime a dozen, mushy, pointless dangling overused flappy fish market … I’m so fucking happy she wants to fight this out!!! She will hit the wall hard!!! And I cannot wait to have this waste of a cum guzzler out of my life!!!” To another actor, he wrote: “Let’s drown her before we burn her!!! I will fuck her burnt corpse afterwards to make sure she’s dead.” Of his sister and producer, he demanded: “I want her replaced on the WB film,” which Depp admitted referred to Aquaman.

He was denied an appeal to the judge’s decision, but in the meantime, he had already undertaken a defamation suit against Heard in the U.S. over her 2018 op-ed in the Washington Post.

Reading the op-ed, there’s little question who Heard is talking about, even though Depp’s name doesn’t appear anywhere in the text. Titled “I Spoke Out About Sexual Violence — And Faced Our Culture’s Wrath. That Has to Change,” the essay touches on the professional consequences she says followed from becoming “a public figure representing domestic abuse,” and the limits of the Me Too movement. “Imagine a powerful man as a ship, like the Titanic,” she wrote. “That ship is a huge enterprise. When it strikes an iceberg, there are a lot of people on board desperate to patch up holes — not because they believe in or even care about the ship, but because their own fates depend on the enterprise.”

Mostly, her argument highlighted political solutions; reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act and shoring up Title IX protections on campus, rather than rolling them back. But three months later, in early 2019, Depp filed a $50 million defamation suit over the article, arguing that her claims were “demonstrably false” and, further, “brought new damage to Mr. Depp’s reputation and career.” While it’s true that Depp’s career has flatlined since 2016, members of the film industry who spoke with The Hollywood Reporter suggested the U.K. ruling may simply have been a final nail in his coffin. Alleged drug abuse and underperforming films, they said, may have also played a part in the waning of his prospects.

In any case, Heard filed to dismiss Depp’s case April 2019, offering new and horrific details about the alleged abuse in the process: Heard alleged that Depp, often under the influence of drugs and alcohol — “We called that version of Johnny ‘the Monster,’” she said in the filing — would beat her, choke her, and at times ripped chunks of her scalp from her head while pulling her hair. “I remember being afraid that Johnny might not know when to stop,” she wrote of one alleged assault, “and that he might kill me.”

The case wasn’t dismissed, and Heard countersued for $100 million in August 2020, saying Depp’s accusations about her making the whole thing up — that she had been “painting on her bruises,” for example — for publicity were intended to hurt her reputation.

Though the Washington Post isn’t named in the lawsuit, it is printed in Springfield, Virginia, which is also where its online servers live. The trial therefore opened on April 11 at the Fairfax County Courthouse, where Judge Penney Azcarate has already barred fans from camping overnight. Per the Guardian, Heard’s lawyers may invoke a Virginia law that protects people from litigation when they speak with third parties about “matters of public concern that would be protected under the first amendment.” Witnesses on Heard’s side are expected to include Elon Musk — whom Heard dated during the divorce proceedings — and James Franco, who apparently asked about her bruised face and who has faced sexual-misconduct allegations of his own. Depp reportedly plans to call Paul Bettany, the actor he texted about burning Heard and then some.

On April 9, just before the trial began, Heard posted a message to her fans on Instagram, saying that she would be “offline for the next several weeks” to focus on the trial. In her post, Heard defended her op-ed, noting, “I never named [Depp], rather I wrote about the rice women pay for speaking out against men in power. I continue to pay that price,” she wrote. She added that she has “always maintained a love for Johnny,” and said, “it brings me great pain to have to live out the details of our past life together in front of the world.”

In opening statements, Depp’s lawyers said that Heard wrongfully “presented herself as the face of the Me Too movement — the virtuous representative of innocent women across the country and the world who have truly suffered abuse,” and that her “false allegations had a significant impact on Mr. Depp’s family and his ability to work in the profession he loved.” Heard’s attorneys, meanwhile, alleged that Depp once sexually assaulted her with a liquor bottle, noting that — as “an obsessed ex-husband hell-bent on revenge” — “all Mr. Depp has wanted to do is humiliate Amber, to haunt her, to wreck her career.”

In the first week of the trial, jurors heard from Depp’s older sister, Christi Dembrowski, and Dr. Laurel Anderson, a marriage counselor who worked with Heard and Depp in 2015. In Anderson’s testimony, which came from a deposition filmed in February, she claimed that, based on her work with the couple, she believed “they engaged in what I saw as mutual abuse.” The doctor claimed that Heard would start fights to “keep him with her” and that those fights could lead to physical violence. “If he was going to leave her to deescalate the fight, she would strike him to keep him there because she would rather be in a fight than have him leave,” Anderson said. She also testified that she saw “multiple” small bruises on Heard’s face once.

On April 14, Depp’s legal team suffered a blow when a judge dismissed Georgina Deuters, who appeared in person as a witness for the actor. She testified that Heard offered her drugs at her wedding to Depp in 2015 and that she had witnessed Depp drink alcohol and take cocaine multiple times throughout their almost 20-year friendship. However, her testimony was struck from the record after Deuters confirmed she had watched video clips of the testimony already given at trial online.

Testimony from Depp’s doctor, Dr. David Kipper, was played for the court. (Like Anderson’s testimony, Kipper’s came from a deposition recorded in February.) Kipper addressed Depp’s drug and alcohol use — he recalled helping the actor detox after he allegedly became dependent on opioids after a dental procedure — and was asked to testify about a March 2015 incident during which Depp’s finger was severely injured. Depp is claiming that the injury was the result of Heard throwing a vodka bottle at him, while Heard’s team maintains that the injury was self-inflicted. According to Kipper, Depp never to his knowledge accused Heard of being responsible for the injury and told the ER staff at the time that he had cut himself with a knife. The doctor confirmed that he saw broken glass in the kitchen at the time, but he did not say whether it was from a vodka bottle, nor could he recall blood being on the glass itself. He said there was “blood around the home” but not “specifically” on the glass. Depp’s former private nurse, Debbie Lloyd, testified in a video deposition that she never worried about Depp’s safety with Heard.

On April 18, Johnny Depp’s security guard Sean Bett testified in court. He recounted overhearing fights between the couple but said he never witnessed any physical abuse save for one instance when Heard allegedly threw a plastic cup or water bottle at Depp. Bett provided the court with photos of Depp from December 2015 that appear to show injuries on the actor’s face.

Taking the stand on April 19, Depp told the court he had originally brought the lawsuit because he felt a “responsibility to clear my name.” Depp denied ever “striking” Heard or any other woman. The actor also recalled what he said was an abusive childhood, describing his father as “a barrage of hatred” in the moments when he would beat Depp with a white leather belt. Depp said his mother also hit him, though he said she stuck more to “verbal” and “psychological abuse.” Eventually, Depp’s father left, leaving his mother in a deep suicidal depression and his son very angry — until a conversation he had with his father years later. During that talk, Depp said he “learned that I was wrong about my first impressions of his exit from the family, very wrong.”

Depp also spoke about the early days of his relationship with Heard, describing her as “too good to be true” during the first year and a half that they dated.

“She was attentive, she was loving, she was smart, she was kind, she was funny, she was understanding, and we had many things in common,” he said. But he said there were small tells that something was off in their relationship, even early on. The actor said Heard scolded him when he arrived home one day and took his boots off, reprimanding him because that was her job, according to Depp. “I did take pause, of course, at the fact that she was visibly shaken or upset that I had broken her rules of routine,” he said. “Within another year, she had become a different person almost.” Depp claimed Heard would become unreasonably irritated if he didn’t want to go to bed at the same time as she did. “Little things like that,” he said, would balloon into much larger problems down the line.

Additionally, Depp talked about his path to acting, and the mental and emotional toll fame took on his psyche. Acknowledging the extreme, violent texts he had sent about Heard — that he hoped her “rotting corpse was decomposing in the fucking trunk of a Honda Civic,” for example — he said he was “ashamed of some of the references made,” adding that “pain has to be dealt with humor, something dark, very dark humor.”

The actor spent a significant amount of time on the subject of his substance use, denying that he had ever taken drugs to “party” but instead to periodically “numb myself of the ghosts, the wraiths, that were still with me.” He framed these as “self-medication moments where what you want to escape from is your own brain, your own head,” but he claimed Heard’s characterization of his habit as “substance abuse” was “just plainly false” and “an easy target for her to hit.” He said “there have been no moments where I was out of control,” specifically on film sets. Depp admitted an addiction to Roxicodone, which he said had developed when he was injured shooting the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, but said he had detoxed during his relationship with Heard.

Depp’s testimony picked up Wednesday morning, where he likened Heard to his abusive mother. He recalled that Heard would use his “weaknesses” as “ammunition” to “verbally decimate” him. And he told the jury he stayed with Heard after she became “abusive” out of concern that she would kill herself, connecting the concern to his mother’s suicide attempt when he was a child. “Ms. Heard had spoken of suicide on a couple of occasions,” he said. “I thought maybe I could help her.”

Accusing Heard of flying off the handle over the possibility of a pre-nup and a post-nup, the actor graphically described the incident in which he severed his finger. According to Depp, Heard hurled two vodka bottles during an explosive argument, one of which sliced off the tip of his middle finger. “I was looking directly at the bones sticking out,” he said. “Blood was just pouring out … I don’t know what a nervous breakdown feels like, but that’s probably the closest that I’ve ever been. Nothing made sense and I knew in my mind and in my heart, this is not life.” Depp said he then began “writing on the wall, in my blood, little reminders from our past … little lies that she told me and little lies that I had caught her in.” Depp insisted he lied to the ER doctor who treated him, telling him — in an attempt to protect Heard — that he smashed his hand in a large “accordion door.” Heard, who has not taken the stand yet, maintains that Depp injured himself during a multi-day bender, using the bloody stump to write cryptic messages meant for her.

Throughout Depp’s testimony on April 20, his attorneys played confused clips from squabbles one of them had recorded. The court reviewed photos of bruises and scratches he says he sustained during “confrontations” with Heard, including one encounter where Depp claimed he tried to stop Heard from pushing into the bathroom, only to have her kick the door into his head. He denied breaking her nose during another fight, alleging that he later found a tissue painted with red nail polish — an apparent imitation of blood.

But the most outrageous allegation stemmed from a final disagreement he says the couple had after Heard’s birthday party in 2016. Depp said he got there late after a long meeting with his accountants and that Heard continued to berate him after he tried to go to bed. When he told her he was leaving, he says she started hitting him; the next morning, when she had vacated the apartment to attend Coachella, he said he tried to go back to collect some of his things. He purportedly decided against it when he saw a photo of their bed with “human fecal matter” piled on his side. Depp told the court that when he told Heard he wanted a divorce, she “tried to blame it on the dogs.”

After their split became public knowledge, Depp suggested that he immediately suffered the consequences of abuse allegations he described as baseless. He also spoke to the op-ed itself, saying that while he agreed with the points made in the second half, “It was obviously referring to our relationship, it was obviously referring to me two years ago, it was clearly about me.” Because of that, he continued, “No matter the outcome of this trial, the second the allegations were made against me … the second more and more of these things metastasized and turned into fodder for the media, once that happened, I lost then.”

Cross-examination picked up steam on April 21 as Heard’s attorney — J. Benjamin Rottenborn — embarked on an exacting and at times painful six hours of questioning. Rottenborn began with the texts Depp sent his friend Paul Bettany in 2013 about drowning and burning Heard. He used these and other comments to illustrate a discrepancy between the wrathful person Depp allegedly became under the influence of drugs and alcohol and the apologetic partner who emerged after he (again, allegedly) sobered up. Much of the cross-examination zeroed in on Depp’s substance use and dependency as referenced in communications with Heard, family, and friends; it also highlighted apparent inconsistencies in his testimony during this trial and his testimony in the U.K. Rottenborn proposed that Depp frequently achieved a blackout state during his relationship with Heard and therefore doesn’t necessarily know what he did or didn’t do — an idea Depp repeatedly refuted, though the texts Rottenborn presented to the jury did suggest a pattern.

“I’m gonna properly stop the booze thing, darling, drank all night before I picked Amber up,” Depp is said to have texted Bettany in May 2014 following a particularly turbulent flight from Boston to Los Angeles. Depp then catalogued the substances he’d apparently consumed, including but not limited to “half a bottle of whiskey,” cocaine, “1,000 red bull and vodkas,” pills, “two bottles of champers on plane,” all — allegedly — on an empty stomach. Depp told Bettany he was “angry, aggro” and “in a fucking blackout,” adding, “I’m done. I am admittedly too fucked in the head to spray my rage at the one I love, for little reason as well.” On the stand, Depp maintained that he hadn’t ingested all of that but instead had taken two Roxicodone with a glass of Champagne — though in his U.K. trial, he granted that he probably wouldn’t have said those things to Bettany if they weren’t true. And in an email to Heard the following day, which Rottenborn read to the court, Depp wrote: “Once again, I find myself in a place of shame and regret. Of course I am sorry. I really don’t know why or what happened, but I will never do it again. I want to get better for you and for me, I must. My illness somehow crept up and grabbed me … I can’t live like that again, and I know you can’t either.”

Rottenborn brought up a number of examples in which Depp seemingly pegged the couple’s disagreements to alcohol or drugs in conversations with other people. He admitted to punching a sconce during an argument with Heard in 2013 and, according to Rottenborn, subsequently texted Bettany about an upcoming trip: “You may have to drink for me. I of course pounded and displayed ugly colors to Amber on a recent journey. I am an insane person and not too fair-headed on the drink.” Rottenborn also probed Depp’s use of the word monster, a nickname the actor previously suggested Heard assigned him in the moments when she believed him — rightly or not — to be under the influence. Heard’s attorney pointed to a text sent to Elton John in 2012, thanking the singer for helping him get sober: “I would’ve been swallowed up by the monster were it not for you, that is a simple fact.” He read another in which Depp told Kipper he had locked his “monster child away in a cage deep within” and another in which he explained that “all I had to do was send the monster away and lock him up,” and he and Heard became “happier than ever.”

In other texts and emails, Depp came off as angry and vindictive. In a 2013 conversation with John, for example, he apparently referred to Paradis, his former partner, as “the French extortionist, ex-cunt” intent on poisoning their kids against Heard. In a September 2016 text to his friend Isaac Baruch, Depp reportedly asked: “Is the slippery whore that I donated my jizz to for a while staying there?”

Rottenborn underscored inconsistencies in Depp’s account of his sobriety in the 18 months before he arrived in Australia in February 2015, surfacing messages to his assistants seemingly requesting cocaine and ecstasy. (Depp insisted the latter was for Heard.) He addressed the finger incident, too, questioning why Depp’s ring and pointer fingers sustained no injuries while the middle was so badly cut. He noted that Depp neglected to mention that he had dipped his severed finger in paint after it stopped bleeding, so he could continue scrawling messages throughout the house, which Depp granted. But the actor did not agree with Rottenborn’s interpretation of hospital documents, recordings, and texts to Kipper, in which Depp seemed to say he’d chopped off his own finger during the confrontation. The court also viewed a video of Depp smashing up the kitchen in one of his homes while Heard apologized to him, and it ended the day with a five-minute recording of Depp threatening to cut himself and Heard pleading with him not to.

Depp’s cross-examination ended Monday morning, shortly after Heard’s lawyer played more audio recordings in the courtroom from the former couple’s altercations. In one, Heard tells him to “put his cigarettes out on someone else,” and he retorts with, “Shut up, fat ass.” Depp denied putting his cigarette out on Heard and called the recording a “grossly exaggerated moment of Ms. Heard.” In another clip, Heard says, “I cry in my bedroom after I dumped you a week prior after you beat the shit out of me,” to which Depp responds, “I made a huge mistake. I won’t do it again.” Heard’s attorneys also provided a stack of articles published before the 2018 op-ed by Heard that Depp’s lawsuit claims torpedoed his reputation and career. The articles were presented as evidence that his public downward spiral began far before the op-ed was published.

Depp’s own attorney, Jessica Meyers, questioned him again after the cross-examination, where he said that the text about burning Heard was “directly from Monty Python,” referring to a scene where a village attempts to drown and burn a woman they believe is a witch. Depp called it an example of his “irreverent and abstract humor.” They played more clips of arguments between Depp and Heard, including one where he asks Heard if she wanted to hit him in the ear “again.”

In another recording played by Depp’s attorney, taken after Heard publicly accused Depp of domestic abuse, Heard and Depp can be heard discussing the allegations over the phone. Heard says, “The last time things got really crazy between us, I really did think I was gonna lose my life and I thought that you would do it on accident.” To which Depp responds, referencing two incidents of alleged violence: “I lost a fucking finger, man. I had a can of mineral spirits thrown at my nose.” Heard then says to him, “Tell people it was a fair fight and see what the jury and judge think. Tell the world, Johnny. Tell them, ‘I, Johnny Depp, I’m a victim too of domestic violence, and it was a fair fight,’ and see if people believe or side with you.” When Depp’s lawyer asked him how he responded to her saying he was a victim of domestic violence, he recalled, “I said, ‘Yes. I am.’”

Depp’s defense is working to frame Heard as vindictive and overly dramatic with serious mental-health problems. On April 26, the defense called Dr. Shannon Curry, a clinical psychologist who had evaluated Heard during two six-hour meetings in December 2021, to the stand. Curry diagnosed Heard in front of the jury with “histrionic personality disorder,” a psychiatric disorder with symptoms that include attention-seeking behavior, excessive expression of emotions, and an exaggerated but vague speaking style. According to Curry, Heard “externalizes blame” and has a tendency to be “self-righteous” as well as explosively angry and clingy. In the psychologist’s estimation, that potent combination may have caused Heard to lash out from a fear of abandonment.

“One of the most common tactics that they’ll use is actually physically assaulting and then getting harmed themselves, but mostly we call this ‘administrative violence.’ Essentially, this is saying that they’ll make threats using the legal system,” Curry said of patients with borderline personality disorder, which she included in her diagnosis of Heard. “So they might say that they are going to file a restraining order or claim abuse, or they might do these things to essentially try to keep their partner from leaving in the moment.” Curry also said that she believed Heard to be faking her PTSD.

In cross-examination, Heard’s attorney Elaine Bredehoft emphasized a detail Curry acknowledged that she’d left out of her report: In what she described as an “interview” for her prospective retainer by Depp’s team, Curry had a three-to-four-hour dinner, with drinks, at the actor’s home. Bredehoft further sought to poke holes in Curry’s credibility by questioning the timeline of her assessments. Heard did not meet with Curry until December 2021, and yet Depp’s attorneys said in court filings from February 2021 that Curry — who, Bredehoft noted, is not board certified — would testify to Heard allegedly making false allegations of abuse and exhibiting signs of borderline personality disorder. Curry claimed that was not her opinion at the time, despite the conclusion of combined borderline and histrionic personality disorder showing up again in her report. According to Bredehoft, Heard reported abuse by Depp to her doctors, who found her reports credible.

We will update as the case progresses.




Reference-www.thecut.com

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