The last super heroine of the cinema is also in real life. After suffering professional ostracism as a result of her divorce from Johnny Depp, the actress is reborn as Mera, the warrior ally of Aqua-man, in the big blockbuster bet of the holidays.
A couple of years ago, Amber Heard was one of the most hated actresses in Hollywood. The continuous death threats she received from her forced her to change her phone number every week.
She hardly dared to leave her apartment and, when she worked up the courage to do so, she was chased by an army of paparazzi and camera drones. The press needed new photos to illustrate articles with which they could attack her without hesitation.
She was paying retaliation for having denounced her husband at the time, the shining star Johnny Depp, for ill-treatment. Neither her testimony nor her graphic evidence – images in which she showed her bruised face and videos that evidenced the interpreter's aggressive behavior – were sufficient to consider her a credible victim. Much of public opinion had already judged her. The film mecca industry, at that time still lacking in the spirit of #MeToo, too. “Like many other women, she had already been s+++ally hara++ed and assaulted in my college days. I did not report it, I did not see myself as a victim, "said the interpreter. This time she wasn't going to make the same mistake.
“Many friends and counselors told me that she would never work again, that I would be blacklisted. A movie in which she was going to act changed me for another actress. She had signed a two-year contract as an ambassador for a fashion firm and they got rid of me. The most frequent question was if she was going to be able to keep my role as Mera in Justice League and Aquaman, ”confessed the 32-year-old Texan in a recent column published in The Washington Post. That question is now answered in the affirmative. Amber Heard finally leaves her troubled past behind to resume a promising career with the most anticipated film of Christmas, Aquaman.
Mera, an Atlantean warrior and ally of the superhero played by Jason Momoa (Game of Thrones), marks her return to a Hollywood front line from which she seemed banned for life. But Heard has not survived media hell to limit himself to giving life to a sidekick character / s+++al interest of the hero. So when she was offered the role for her, her first response was negative. “I'm allergic to damsels in distress, that two-dimensional archetype that female characters are often limited to, and more so in these types of movies. But Zack (Snyder, producer) beat me to being a warrior queen. He told me that I would have a sword and a crown, and so I accepted, ”he states in Entertainment Weekly. Her Mera follows the pattern started by the Amazons in Wonder Woman or the soldiers of Wakanda (the dora milaje) in Black Panther, and she's not content to watch man save the world, but instead actively participates. "They go into this adventure as equals and end it the same way," she adds.
It's been too long since Amber Heard made headlines for her work in the movie mecca. Back in 2011, when she met Johnny Depp on the set of The Rum Diaries, she was one of the greatest promises of the seventh art and a style icon, chosen as the face of brands like Guess. After her stormy relationship with the interpreter of Pirates of the Caribbean (Australiagate canine included), Heard's public image was seriously damaged by the attacks of the actor himself and her environment. He not only denies having ever laid hands on her ex, but also accuses her of being the violent one in the relationship and of being part of a large-scale conspiracy against her person. The trial closed with an agreement by which Depp paid seven million dollars to his ex-partner. Heard, firm to what he promised after resolving the dispute, donated the entire amount to a children's hospital in Los Angeles, but the hatred towards her did not stop: "I became the public figure who represented domestic abuse, and I felt the fury of our culture against women who dare to speak out.”
This is not the only cause that has taken her to court in recent months. After shooting in 2014 the adaptation for the big screen of the novel by Martin Amis London Fields (London Fields), the producers of the tape sued Heard for breaching his contract to promote the film and for conspiring with the director of the same, Matthew Cullen, to remove from the final cut the scenes in which she went out . The actress responded with a countersuit for hiring a double against her will to shoot more scenes than those initially agreed upon. The parties reached an agreement last September and the film was finally released, three years late and with very little luck, on the big screen.
Perhaps due to its evident beauty and its turbulent past, the mistake has been made, as Tatiana Segel maintains in The Hollywood Reporter, "of judging the book by its cover." The sentimental relationship that soon joined her with Elon Musk, controversial tycoon and co-founder of companies such as Tesla, PayPal or Space X, continued to perpetuate her status as 'girlfriend of' in the tabloids. The idyll barely lasted a few months, but it was enough to divert attention from the activism and solidarity actions in which she has been involved in recent times: feminism, LGTB + rights, humanitarian aid to Syrian refugees or the migration problem (she was born in the border between Mexico and the United States and speaks perfect Spanish). Suffice to say, Heard is the first American actress to be named a Human Rights Champion by the United Nations Office for Human Rights.
The actress is, two years later, in the starting box. Her brands no longer run away from her, as evidenced by her recent engagement as an ambassador for L'Oreal Paris. She continues to be a reference on the red carpet, daring with outfits as risky as the spectacular Valentino Haute Couture (with matching swimming cap) that she wore at the London premiere of Aqua-man. Her work as the aquatic warrior Mera in the film has been praised by critics and there is already speculation about a future meeting with Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman in a superheroine spin-off that begins to balance the scales of decades of cinematic patriarchy. . There's nothing like splashing a little water on her face to start a new day.
