Amber Heard’s Transformation From Texas Pageant Queen To Hollywood Personality

Heard was raised in Austin, Texas, the second of three girls born to Patricia and David Heard. Her dad ran a building firm, and her mom was an online research specialist. From as far back as she can remember, Heard was a serious bookworm. She would wile away her days in the Austin Public Library, her developing political views heavily influenced by a love of dystopian sci-fi novels.

The young Heard was also kind of a tomboy, though. Of her father, she once told Glamour magazine, “I was his hunting and fishing buddy. When I was 12, I was struggling to stay on a bucking horse that was particularly unhappy about the arrangement. I spotted a little patch of grass, and I leapt.”

Dad wasn’t happy with this at all, though, and encouraged her to get back on the horse. She confessed, “It didn’t just take the look on my dad’s face to put me back in the saddle. But that helped.” It’s a philosophy she still abides by in adulthood, saying, “You gotta get back on the horse. ’Cause the only thing worse than being thrown off is giving up on trying.”

From a young age, Heard knew what we wanted to achieve and was very much a self-starter. She told Glamour that, when she was 12, she went to local businesses to ask them for financial support in raising funds to compete in beauty contests. As an adult, though, she confessed, “Pageants are weird, and I can’t support the objectification.”

As she aged into her teens, the small-town confines of Austin became too stifling for Heard. She admitted to Glamour that she was bored by her hometown — or, as she put it, “Conservative, God-fearin’ Texas.” She responded by becoming an “obstinate, bisexual, vegan atheist.” The star chuckled, “I guess you could say I had my own things to rebel against.”

In 2012 Heard’s father spoke to British newspaper the Daily Mail about his daughter’s fierce drive. He said, “I’m proud of her. She’s hard-working, steadfast to her job and doesn’t do anything but go to auditions and meetings. She hardly does anything else — she wanted this for her career since she was 12 years old, from the time she was a little girl.”

In fact, the young girl was so determined to become an actor that she left school at 16 to pursue her dreams. Her father said, “She did modeling first and went to New York. She came home because I begged her. But I couldn’t stop her when she was 18. I begged her not to go but she knew what she was doing, and she was right. She’s a very talented actress.”

Heard once spoke about her foray into modeling to British newspaper The Independent. Being able to go to New York City as a 16-year-old was exciting — she enthused, “I thought I had died and gone to heaven. From that moment on I was different.” The actual modeling part, though? She hated that. As an aspiring actress, having her picture taken simply held no appeal.

Meghan Brindley, one of Heard’s classmates, also spoke to the Daily Mail. She gave some insight into what the star was like growing up, and it may surprise fans of the outspoken, confident person she became over the years. Brindley admitted, “Some people used to call her ’Amber seen-and-not-Heard.’”

“She was very quiet,” explained Brindley. “She always seemed almost like her mind was just off somewhere else and she always said, ‘I’m going to go and be an actress and that is what I want to do.’” It sounds like Heard was always single-minded and ambitious, but perhaps needed some time to find her voice. 

As mentioned, when Heard left home to model at 16, she also dropped out of school — and she never went back. A USA Today newspaper article from 2007 revealed she eventually studied at home and achieved her high school diploma. It also detailed a tragedy that occurred when Heard was 16, and it’s tempting to wonder if that had any impact on her decision to leave Austin.

“My very best friend died in a car accident when I was 16 years old,” revealed a candid Heard, only 21 at the time of the interview. “That was the hardest blow emotionally that I have ever had to endure. Suddenly, you realize tomorrow might not come. Now I live by the motto, ‘Today is what I have.’”

When Heard made her way to L.A. at the tender age of 17, she did everything she could to kick-start her acting career. She revealed to Glamour, “I would audition for everything, from ‘Hot Girl Number Three at Party’ to ’Daughter Leaving for College.’ I would go around, a lot of times by city bus. I’d sit toward the back and change underneath my jacket.”

Like most young actors, she started out with small roles on film and television. She nabbed minor parts in Friday Night Lights, North Country, Drop Dead Sexy, and The O.C. between 2004 and 2005. Then in 2006 she landed her first starring role in the horror film All The Boys Love Mandy Lane, which made its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Heard spoke with website Female First about the role, which skewered audience expectations about the “final girl” trope common in horror movies. She said, “When I got the script it was like falling in love. It was one of those moments when you read something, and you instantly know it’s really special. It was so different.”

“As a young actress just starting out in Los Angeles, you read so many scripts that want to pigeonhole you,” continued Heard. “They put you into a category as the pretty, young girl and nothing more. You’re always the girlfriend, there to support the rest of the characters. I read so much of that stuff when I moved here, and Mandy Lane was just the opposite.”

Frustratingly for Heard and the filmmakers, though, issues over the film’s distribution would deny U.S. audiences the chance to see it for seven long years. It did secure a theatrical release in Europe in 2008, but it didn’t come out in America until 2013. Heard was still able to use the buzz the film and her performance generated to get more work, though.

A leading role in The CW teen series Hidden Palms followed in 2007, but it wound up being canceled after only eight episodes. Heard then bounced back in 2008 with her two biggest roles to date — in comedy Pineapple Express and teen action flick Never Back Down. Add to that a cameo in 2009’s Zombieland and all of a sudden Heard’s star was on the rise in Hollywood.

Over the next couple of years, Heard became synonymous with the horror genre. She starred in the 2009 remake of The Stepfather, horror legend John Carpenter’s 2010 comeback film The Ward, and the Nicolas Cage action horror vehicle Drive Angry in 2011. They were all lambasted by critics and underperformed at the box office, though.

The year 2011 also saw the release of The Rum Diary, though, a picture which would change Heard’s life for better and for worse. She originally auditioned back in 2008 and, as part of that process, was introduced to its star: Johnny Depp. The movie was a passion project for him, and he wanted to meet the woman potentially playing his love interest. 

“We talked about books, and music, poetry,” Heard told website MSN in 2022. “We liked a lot of the same stuff — obscure writers, pieces of poetry I hadn’t heard anyone else reference. I think I left the office with a few books that he gave me.” She added, “I wasn’t a fan of his work, I wasn’t familiar with him, but I knew who he was.”

Later, during the filming of a love scene, Heard came to feel like they weren’t really acting. She revealed, “It didn’t feel like a normal scene any more, it felt more real. He grabbed my face and pulled me into him and really kissed me.” She added, “I felt chemistry, I felt this other thing that went beyond my job, for sure. Johnny clearly felt that way about me.”

At that time, however, both were in relationships — Depp with his long-time girlfriend Vanessa Paradis and Heard with painter/photographer Tasya van Ree. A few years later, though, after Paradis and Depp broke up, they began seeing each other in secret. It took until 2013 for the couple to be pictured holding hands at a Rolling Stones gig; by early 2014 Heard was snapped wearing an engagement ring.

February 3, 2015, was the date Heard and Depp got hitched at the Los Angeles mansion they shared, followed by an extravagant ceremony on Depp’s private Bahamian island. Unfortunately for the couple, rumors that their relationship was ready to implode would dog their marriage. In November 2015 Heard told Marie Claire magazine, “I try not to react to the horrible misrepresentation of our lives, but it is strange, and hard.”

Still, despite Heard’s protestations that the marriage was going well, she wound up filing for divorce on May 23, 2016: only 15 months after tying the knot. She added a restraining order against Depp only four days after the divorce papers, alleging assault. One of the most bitter celebrity divorces in history would then ensue, tying the pair up in court for years. 

Amazingly, while all this turmoil was going on, Heard enjoyed a year-long relationship with another famous face: Tesla founder Elon Musk. They had met in 2013 but things reportedly didn’t turn romantic until 2016 when they both got divorced. They dated for over a year, broke up, then gave things another go for a few months, before calling it a day completely in February 2018.

Somehow, even with her personal life splattered all over the tabloids, Heard continued working and airing her brutally honest opinions on the state of Hollywood. While promoting The Danish Girl, she told The Independent that the truly great roles for women were few and far between. She lamented, “I’m a woman. I get to giggle sometimes,” and dubbed most parts “pedantic and over-played stereotypes.” 

“Because there are few parts, there’s fierce competition and anything that’s led by a woman is not financeable,” continued Heard. “So, those movies are typically under-financed and under-budgeted and under-made. Filmmakers are 90 percent male, so we don’t have a more balanced perspective from our storytellers. We’re way behind in this possibly progressive medium.”

In Heard’s opinion, the answer lay not only in the people making the movies, but the people watching them too. She said, “It takes audiences saying, ’I will show up to see a movie led by a female cast or one focused on the female life or elements of female perspective.’ It takes the studio system to be tired of this old, formulaic approach to making movies.”

In 2017 Heard took on her most high-profile role to date. She appeared as Aquaman’s lady love Mera in Justice League and would go on to reprise the role in the Aquaman solo movie. She explained to Glamour magazine that she wasn’t sure about wading into superhero waters, until her fears were allayed by the DC Comics source material.

You see, Heard did some research and read a comic in which Mera bristled at the notion of being called “Aquawoman.” She immediately knew she wanted to play her and loved how the character said, “Hey, wait a second. I have my own name. My name is Mera.” It made her think, “That’s my kind of girl. I like her.” 

This didn’t mean the realities of playing a superhero were a walk in the park, though. Beyond all the training and dieting that goes into looking and moving like a superhuman, she also had to deal with any actor’s bane — the green screen. After all, Aquaman is mostly set in the underwater CGI wonderland that is Atlantis.

“You have to maintain a vigorous imagination while being suspended 25 feet in the air, acting with very little around you that resembles the world that will be depicted when it comes out,” admitted Heard. It was a tough shoot, and it left her wary of having to squeeze into Mera’s green skintight costume again. She chuckled, “I’m not gagging to get back in that suit.”

Despite this customary honesty, Heard’s enthusiasm for playing Mera was obvious. She told website Screen Rant, “It’s a strong, badass, kickass, fierce warrior superhero in her own right. You know? She is the driving force in the script — I mean, of the story.” She added, “She turns Arthur into Aquaman. And she figures everything out.”

Heard continued, “That’s the kind of character I can get behind, and that’s also the kind of character that we need now. We need more female superheroes…we need more kickass, powerful women who do things that have complexity, that have agency.” In theory, Heard had found what many actors crave — a franchise role to which she could return again and again.

Life had different plans, though, and the certainty of Heard’s future as Mera soon became very uncertain. As the defamation trial brought against her by Depp continued to be writ large all over TV screens and social media, some vocal internet users campaigned for her to be taken out of the sequel, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. This was, at least in part, a reaction to Depp being removed from the Fantastic Beasts franchise. 

While testifying, Heard claimed that her role in Aquaman 2 had indeed been trimmed. She alleged, “I was given a script and then given new versions of the script that had taken away scenes that had action in it, that depicted my character and another character — without giving any spoilers away — two characters fighting with one another.” She added, “They just removed a bunch out.”

As for her future, Heard claimed her public battles with Depp had severely limited her career options. She said she’d had to fight tooth and nail to remain in Justice League and Aquaman at all, and her brand ambassador role for L’Oreal was also minimized. She even alleged she had been taken off a press tour for Paramount+ series The Stand due to the media firestorm surrounding her.

As of the end of the trial, Heard only has one project awaiting release. She revealed in court, “I shot a film in Guatemala. It’s a small independent, meaning it doesn’t have distribution or anything; it’s a lower-budget film that I had been attached to for many years called Into the Fire.” After that, who knows what will come next for the once high-flying star?