Have you heard about Amber Heard? With one of TIFF’s most buzzed-about films, and another on the way, you will.

Amber Heard went about landing the lead role in the movie based on Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diary, opposite Johnny Depp and Aaron Eckhart, the old-fashioned way. She applied in writing for it.

It seems a fitting way to go about it, considering that, like Depp, the 23-year-old Texas-born actress is a true-blue gonzo groupie.

“I’m a huge fan of Hunter S. Thompson,” the fast-rising star explained as she sat in a shady corner of a Yorkville hotel patio this week. “He was one of a kind and he has affected me throughout my whole life, since I could read.

“As soon as I heard about the movie, I wrote letters to the director (Bruce Robinson) and producers involved.”

In the notes, Heard explained that she, a lifelong passionate fan of the renegade reporter, was born to play Chenault in the story Thompson penned while in his 20s and based on his booze-soaked time as a reporter in Puerto Rico. And in doing so, she beat out one of Hollywood’s top leading ladies for the part, Scarlett Johannsen.

Heard is at the Toronto International Film Festival for the world premiere of The Joneses, a movie becoming one of the festival’s big buzz flicks for its clever, insightful script and solid performances.

Demi Moore and David Duchovny star as Kate and Steve Jones, with Heard as teen daughter Jenn and Canadian-born Ben Hollingsworth as son Matt. But the ideal, wealthy suburban family who have all of the latest toys and the best of everything are not all they seem.

Next-door neighbours Larry (Gary Cole) and Summer (Glenne Headly) instantly bond with the perfect family next door and their desire to keep up with these Joneses leads to disaster.

The movie will vex critics who are already trying to figure out how to review the movie without revealing the plot, which examines our consumerist culture with dark humour and despair. Heard has a scene that draws gasps as she plays the acerbic yet yearning Jenn with a maturity that shows she’s ready to take on challenging roles.

“Jenn is a very conflicted girl,” said Heard, who suggested she become a brunette for the role.

“She’s tortured and she comes across as somebody who thinks she’s an adult, thinks she’s ready for adult relationships and puts on a front.

But she’s alone and she has an attitude that makes her snappy and cheeky and aggressive, and, like most young women, she has a deep-seated vulnerability.”

Heard was channeling old-school Hollywood glamour for her interview with the Star – dressed in a black-and-white sleeveless dress and black stilettos, her lips a deep carmine against porcelain skin and her long hair styled like that of a 1940s star.

After seeing the script for The Jonses, Heard told director Derrick Borte, “I know her,” when she read Jenn’s part.

“I think a lot of women can confuse physical intimacy with emotional intimacy,” she said.

The Joneses also required Heard to do a semi-nude scene, something she did more explicitly in The Informers earlier this year. The film, set in excessive 1980s Los Angeles, bombed.

“I took on full nudity for that film because the script was based on (Bret Easton Ellis’s) book and I wanted to represent the raw intensity, the important character aspects of what makes this story so dark and compelling and twisted,” Heard explained. “I took a big risk and took a gamble and in this case I lost. The movie turned out to be a big flop.”

Critics savaged the movie, dismissing it as “bleak, boring and bloated” and Rottentomatoes.com gave it a splat-worthy 85 per cent rotten. It never opened in Toronto.

But Heard smiles when she says, “I’m okay with it. I don’t regret any movie I have taken on.”

She won’t regret signing on for The Joneses, if early response is any indication. Already, several parties have expressed interest in picking it up for distribution, Borte said.

Heard, who has just wrapped The Rum Diary, started her career in TV; her best-known role is Greta Matthews on the CW show Hidden Palms. She went on to play the lead in All The Boys Love Mandy Lane, which premiered at TIFF in 2006, and was Seth Rogen’s girlfriend in Pineapple Express.

If she hadn’t turned to acting, maybe Heard could have ended up in journalism school, although she’d be following in the often-staggering footsteps of her idol.

“If I could write I would be in school for journalism. Wouldn’t that be amazing? I would love to do what he did. There is a certain pop culture journalism that will in essence live forever. It really was an epoch, an era and he was in that place.”

With a huge laugh, she offers her favourite Thompson quote: “Faster, faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death.”

Source: The Star