You Can't Keep Amber Heard Down

How Does A Former Pageant Girl Go From Breaking Horses In Texas To Breaking The Rule That Women in Hollywood should shut up and Look Pretty? By Going All in.

- Phoebe Reilly

I THINK AMBER HEARD MAY BE GHOSTING ME. We are talking on the phone about her new film Aquaman, in which she reprises the role of flame-haired warrior queen Mera, when all of a sudden the line goes dead.

I was asking if she had been wary of joining a DC superhero franchise back in 2017, when she first took on the role in Justice League. Yes, she says, but while reading the comic book source material, she was pleasantly surprised to see that Mera flinches at being referred to as Aquawoman. “She says, ‘Hey, wait a second. I have my own name. My name is Mera,’ ” Heard, 32, recalls. “And I thought, That’s my kind of girl. I like her.”

Of course superhero territory comes with its occupational hazards: weight lifting, martial arts training, grueling days on set. “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,” Heard says. This goes doubly for a movie in which much of the action takes place undersea alongside battle-ready sharks. And after eight months of filming, she’s relieved to not have to spend 45 minutes every day suctioning herself into Mera’s green piscine costume. “I’m not gagging to get back in that suit,” she says.

And that’s when the call drops off. “Amber?” She doesn’t resurface. Nobody can reach her.

The next morning, in a car en route from the Dallas airport, she apologizes profusely. She wasn’t ghosting me, she promises. Her phone died, and then she was busy writing a speech in support of Democratic representative turned Senate hopeful Beto O’Rourke. Oh. In that case, carry on.