11 nov 2018 ano - Amber Heard THE SUNDAY TIMES Fallout From Her Marriage To Johnny Depp and Female Empowerment INTERVIEW

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THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE (UK)
THE WEEKLY INTERVIEW:
AMBER HEARD

The Interview: actress Amber Heard on the fallout from her marriage to Johnny Depp and female empowerment

“Trauma sneaks up on you. Suddenly you’re on the floor crying.”

INTERVIEW
By Leaf Arbuthnot

Amber Heard is gripping my hand, her eyes full of tears. We are in an old-fashioned hotel in the Hague, and the American actress is remembering the Kavanaugh hearing in September, in which Christine Blasey Ford accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault before the US Senate judiciary committee.

“Every single woman I know watching that hearing was triggered,” says Heard, 32. She is one of those people who looks madly beautiful even when they are crying. “I don’t know a single woman who watched it and didn’t have their heart break. We are all Dr Ford. And we know it.” Hmm. I’m not so sure, but she continues undeterred. “I’m sorry if [watching the hearing] hurt you,” she continues, staring into my eyes. “But I feel you. I feel you. I think the good news is we all feel you. You know? We’re all your sisters.”

In May 2016, Heard made headlines around the world when she accused her estranged husband, Johnny Depp, of domestic violence, arriving at an LA courthouse with bruising around her eye to allege that he had thrown a mobile phone at her face. Depp was given a restraining order, though actors including Paul Bettany and Depp’s former partner Vanessa Paradis rallied around to express their scepticism that he was capable of such violence. A leaked video showed him seemingly drunk, slamming cabinets before lunging at Heard when he realised he was being filmed. The divorce was finalised last year; Heard has donated her $7m settlement to charity.

Did Ford’s testimony revive memories of Heard’s own trauma? “The results of [trauma] are sneaky,” she says. “They’re not as obvious as you think. I don’t hide under a table when I hear a loud bang, though that happens to certain people with PTSD. Trauma sneaks up on you in weird ways, where all of a sudden you find yourself in a puddle on the floor, crying while watching this play out live on Fox or CNN … and you wonder why you care so much. It’s not your trial, right? But it is. It is.”

Last month, Depp gave an interview to GQ magazine in which he denied abusing Heard, saying that the past three years had “felt like a perverse situation that was inflicted on me”, and that he was “hurt” by her allegations. Heard’s lawyer stated in turn that Depp’s denials in GQ were “entirely untrue”. I ask Heard if there is anything that her younger self wishes she’d known. There is an uncharacteristically long pause.

“I could not possibly have appreciated how deep and how strong the systems that oppress women and marginalised groups are,” she says. “I still, to this day, believe the truth is the only thing that’s sustainable. I just didn’t realise how much it would f****** hurt getting there. I don’t know where that finish line is, but I fight every single day, and every single day it gets better. And every single woman that comes up to me and says thank you reminds me of my instinct to believe that right always wins, ultimately, that a lie is not sustainable, injustice is not sustainable, that there’s a right side of history and a trend towards progress.”

We are in the right place for this kind of woke chat. Heard has flown to the Hague to speak at One Young World, a yearly summit that brings together bright young people from around the globe, “empowering them to make lasting connections to create positive change”. The launch event the previous evening, in front of the historic Peace Palace, had the fervour of an Olympic opening ceremony, with energetic flag-waving and inspirational speeches. Gordon Brown, Sir John Major and Tawakkol Karman, a former Nobel peace prizewinner, are all here.

Heard’s main commitment is a speech on migrant rights on the US-Mexico border. “When anyone’s human rights are denied, all human rights are undermined,” she tells me ardently.

Some stars disappoint in the flesh. Not Heard. She is luminous and magnetic, with a croaky starlet voice straight from central casting. She settles her tiny frame onto the sofa and tells me she has Band-Aids on her chest. This is not a metaphor for her bruised heart — she really is wearing plasters over her nipples. British Airways, she explains, lost her suitcase on the way over, leaving her braless. In the absence of a fresh change of clothes, she is wearing a knitted jumper and skirt that would make anyone else look frumpy. “I’ve learnt a certain remedy for jet lag,” she tells me when I ask if she slept well. “Which is: don’t spend enough time in one place to be accustomed to it. It’s great for nothing else other than work and travel, but it comes in handy in my life.”

Heard was raised in Texas, about 40 miles from the state capital. “Austin’s fun,” she says, “but you definitely wouldn’t have a fun time where I’m from.” Her father, David, trained horses for a living and also worked in construction. He was a keen hunter, and as a child Amber and her younger sister, Whitney, would eat what he shot: venison, quail, duck, pheasant. Amber left home at 17 to make it as a model and actress. She had no contacts in LA and her parents were sceptical, but she soon began clinching roles. The parts became higher profile and better paid until she was able to afford the vintage car she’d always dreamt about.

Her film credits range from the enjoyably silly (Pineapple Express, Magic Mike XXL) to the relatively high-brow (The Danish Girl, in which she played a bohemian ballerina). She appeared in the catastrophic film adaptation of Martin Amis’s London Fields, which last month had the second worst opening-weekend box office of all time for a big film. The long-delayed movie had been mired in setbacks — not least when its producers sued Heard for $10m claiming, among other things, that she had breached her contract by refusing to perform certain “acting services”. Heard countersued, accusing them of using a body double to make it appear that she had starred in sex scenes she hadn’t consented to. She reached a settlement with the producers in September, allowing the film finally to be released.

Heard met Depp on the set of 2011’s The Rum Diary, where she played his on-screen lover, having reportedly beaten Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley to the role. The couple married in 2015 in LA, with a second ceremony on his private island in the Bahamas. But the fairy tale came to an abrupt halt with her domestic-abuse allegations. She has since been linked to stars including the model Cara Delevingne and Tesla’s Elon Musk, but for now is focused on acting and honing her role as an activist.

She tells me she has spent many years “on the run”, a “peripatetic” existence that has taken its toll on her personal life. “Relationships are hard to maintain when you’re constantly on the move,” she admits.

Even when she is sitting still, she gives the impression of someone who is flitting from thing to thing, moving as quickly as possible to avoid silence and her own company. “I have a hyperactive mind that is allergic to boredom and has high standards for stimulation,” she explains. “The antidote to anxiety is action. The busier you are, the less you have the ability to succumb to it.”

Is she happy? “Yes. Yes,” she says, giving me a dreamy smile I don’t quite believe. Is she in love? “I’m in love with life, and doing that which truly, um … gives me love back. Which is people.”

For now, though, Heard needs caffeine. We stop talking to allow her to order a croissant and an iced coffee. She nibbles half of the pastry, assuring me she is “unstoppable at a buffet”. Every so often she breaks off our conversation to ask her friend, Todd, an enigmatic man who partners charities up with celebrities, whether her missing suitcase has been tracked down. After a while, I too begin praying for its return. Finally, she decides she needs Todd’s belt, which he removes from his trousers without complaint. We all watch, bemused, as she knots the belt around her minuscule waist and stares at herself to see what the effect on her outfit is.

I try to steer us back on track by asking about the importance of her female network. “I’m very much a woman’s woman,” she says. She believes the patriarchy has forced women into competition, but deep down we are wired to be “connectors, community builders, mothers, sisters, friends”. Hollywood, she says, fuels female rivalry: “I feel it in some actresses and models and I don’t fault them for it — I think they haven’t had a woman look them in the eye and say, ‘I’m on your side, I believe in you.’ ”

She talks about her mother, Paige, who she recently discovered “had to resign” from her job in technology “because of sexual harassment”. Heard still seems shocked by the revelation, but remains optimistic that women’s experiences are finally improving. There has been “a shift in what’s happening all around us, not just in attitude, but in the nature of the conversations and the vigour in which we are having them”, she says.

She sees herself as part of a great global sorority. “I feel that as soon as you get to know me, you know I’m on your side, as a woman. I don’t care how you feel I look. Just like you, I struggle with the same iniquities, personal discomfort, insecurities, strengths and weaknesses as you do.” She says she gets “nervous” when she enters a crowded room and detects a barrage of “preconceived notions” about her. She worries that her reputation means she “won’t have the opportunity to get to know somebody, or let them know that I am who I am”.

I witness her nerves first-hand on the way to giving her speech. During the car journey she becomes quieter, preferring to play music she discovered while visiting the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan. When she does talk, it is to tell me about a girl she met there who was terrified at the prospect of having her cleft lip operated on. I am sceptical about the usefulness of glamazon celebs jetting off to deprived places to hold hands with the unfortunate. Does she ever feel guilty for doing so?

“No,” she says, her eyes huge and sincere. “Even though I didn’t come from a privileged background by American standards, I have had incredible luck and we are all burdened by it. I don’t feel embarrassed about it. Do something about it, is what I would say.”

I’m not convinced we’ve drilled down to the heart of the matter, but directness is not Heard’s strong suit. She readily admits to being “long-winded” — sentences charge bravely into a labyrinth, never to emerge.

Thankfully, she is more focused on stage. In front of a packed auditorium of engaged young people, she gushes about “the importance of our shared humanity” and recalls her visit to the US-Mexico border, where women bearing “markings of abuse” were drawn to tell her their gruelling stories. It’s a tough gig — coming after many phenomenal speeches, including one by a man whose sister and mother were murdered by a violent father — but she just about succeeds in holding the room.

Throughout the day, I see people hankering after a picture, or a look, or a kind word from Heard. When people recognise her, she says, there are “two kinds of faces” they make. “There’s the selfie face — that’s great, I love people appreciating what I do.” But it’s the other one she’s seeing more of. She beats her heart with her fist, whispering, “Thank you, thank you, ” by way of demonstration. “Women approach me and bring their sister and best friend and they say thank you. And I know deep down in my soul what that means.”

Amber Heard was a One Young World Counsellor at this year’s summit at the Hague

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