New Delhi: Hollywood star Johnny Depp accused Amber Heard of giving "grossly embellished" accounts of his substance abuse while giving evidence.

The 58-year-old actor is suing his ex-wife for defamation over a Washington Post op-ed she wrote, in which she referred to herself as a victim of domestic violence, and she has counter sued her former spouse, with the legal battle currently taking place in Virginia.

On Tuesday, Depp took the stand at Fairfax County Courthouse, and though he admitted to developing an addiction to pain medication following an injury on the set of 'Pirates of the Caribbean 4', taking his mother's "nerve pills" from the age of just 11, and indulging in various substances over the years to "numb myself of the ghosts, the wraiths that were still with me from my youth", he insisted the 'Aquaman' star had made some "plainly false" allegations relating to his use of drugs and alcohol.

Highlighting various long periods of sobriety over the years and explaining how he had detoxed from the prescription drugs, he told the court: "The characterisation of my 'substance abuse' that's been delivered by Ms. Heard is grossly embellished.

"And I'm sorry to say, but a lot of it is just plainly false. I think that it was an easy target for her to hit. Because once you've trusted somebody for a certain amount of years, and you've told them all the secrets of your life, that information can of course be used against you," reports femalefirst.co.uk.

The actor also looked back on the early days of his relationship with Amber and admitted she seemed "too good to be true", though he was aware of things that "might be a bit of a dilemma at some point".

He said: "In the beginning of my relationship with Ms Heard, from what I recall, it was as if she was too good to be true. 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.

"For that year or year and a half it was amazing, there were a couple of things that stuck in my head that I noticed that I thought might be a little bit of a dilemma at some point."

He recalled how Amber developed a "routine" when he came home from work, in which she would give him a glass of wine and take his boots off, but when he once disrupted the ritual by removing his own footwear, the 'Danish Girl' star became "visibly shaken" and upset.

He said: "Once you notice something like that then you start to notice other little tidbits and things that come out.

Then within a year or year and a half she had become another person almost."

Later in his testimony, Depp told the court how Amber would get upset if he wanted to stay up late and watch TV when she went to bed, reports femalefirst.co.uk.