Emily Hampshire: Actress apologises for Depp and Heard costume

Schitt's Creek actress Emily Hampshire has apologised for dressing up as Johnny Depp and Amber Heard with a friend for Halloween.

Hampshire, 42, told her Instagram followers she was "sorry and ashamed".

In a now-deleted post, Hampshire was seen styled as Depp, with drawn-on facial hair and tattoos, while her friend screwed up her face in mock distress as the actor's ex-wife.

Former couple Depp and Heard both accused each other of domestic abuse.

Hampshire, who played Stevie Budd in sitcom Schitt's Creek, described the costume as "one of the most thoughtless, insensitive, and ignorant things" she had ever done.

In the original post, the Canadian actress was seen wearing a pin-striped suit, with her hair slicked back. She was also holding a wine bottle - an apparent reference to details from the couple's televised court case last year.

Hampshire went on to write that she was ashamed at having put "something that awful out into the universe" and said "domestic abuse is never, ever funny".

Last year, Depp and Heard's relationship was in the spotlight due to a US court case in which Depp accused his ex-wife of defamation over an article she wrote for the Washington Post.

In the 2018 opinion piece, Heard said she had lost work and received death threats after accusing her ex-husband of domestic abuse, and had "felt the full force of our culture's wrath for women who speak out".

Depp said the article implied he was violent towards Heard, and won the seven-week case against her.

Two years previously, Depp lost a similar case in the UK against the Sun newspaper, after the High Court said the content of an article which called him a "wife-beater" was "substantially true".