Opening tomorrow is the horror/thriller The Stepfather. The film is about Penn Badgley’s (Gossip Girl) character returning home from military school and finding his mother living with a new boyfriend. As the two men get to know one another, Badgley’s character grows suspicious. As you might imagine, action ensues. Anyway, I got to speak with Amber Heard earlier today as she plays the Penn Badgley’s girlfriend in the movie. While readers of Collider know I prefer doing video interviews, Amber was only available for phoners, so that’s how this was done.

During our short conversation, Heard talked about making The Stepfather, doing a cameo in Zombieland (she played the hot neighbor in the beginning of the film), and she also talked about playing Johnny Depp’s girlfriend in next year’s The Rum Dairy. Our conversation after the jump:

Being chased and terrorized by a rage-driven psychopath around and under a house would seem to be a pretty stressful situation, even if it’s just for a movie. But for Amber Heard, the young actress who co-stars in Screen Gems’ new remake of The Stepfather, it was all in a day’s work. “You know, it’s just like any aspect of my job,” she says of taking part in such cinematic mayhem. “It could be very weird, but because it’s so weird so often, it becomes very, very…unweird, if that makes sense. My job is funny that way, in that I come to set every day and there are plenty of crazy things going on. That’s not really one of them that sticks out.”

This statement won’t surprise anyone who has been following Heard’s career over the last few years. After attracting a wealth of positive attention in the title role of the slasher opus All The Boys Love Mandy Lane—albeit largely at festivals, since a commercial U.S. release remains stalled by distributor Senator Entertainment’s money problems—she has been all over the horror scene lately. She cuddles up to Jesse Eisenberg and then tries to eat his flesh in the current hit Zombieland, just wrapped a starring role in John Carpenter’s latest chiller The Ward and not only acted but served as a producer on another recently lensed redux, And Soon The Darkness.

Amber Heard digs horror. Fact. And we love her all the more for it.

The All the Boys Love Mandy Lane star can be seen in The Stepfather, which hits theaters tomorrow, and she tells us she had a blast playing one of the undead in Zombieland. Up next, John Carpenter’s The Ward which she recently wrapped shooting and told us a bit about on the phone today.

“I think it’s awesome,” she enthused. “John is a legend and rightfully so. I love that I got to work with him.”

DreadCentral posted that the first footage from The Ward has been found online. Sadly it doesn’t feature Amber but an interesting bit to check out nonetheless!

The video appeared exclusively on canalplus and is in French, but has that ever stopped you before? The Ward stuff begins at one minute and thirty seconds in.

Watch the video here!

Jared Harris (From Within, Resident Evil: Apocalypse), Mika Boorem, Lyndsy Fonseca (Kick-Ass), Laura-Leigh, Sydney Sweeney, Dan Anderson, Susanna Burney, Sali Sayle will all be joining the previously announced Amber Heard, Danielle Panabaker and Mamie Gummer in John Carpenter’s The Ward, reports the IMDB. The story follows a girl (Heard) who is admitted to a psychiatric ward, meets other girls there with distinct personalities and discovers a mysterious girl haunting the halls at night.

Source: Bloody-Disgusting.com

Horror movie master John Carpenter will film his latest picture in Spokane.

Carpenter, directing his first movie since 2001′s Ghosts of Mars, will film portions of The Ward from July 27 through Sept. 4 at various locations in Spokane.

Local production company North by Northwest will handle the technical chores.

The Ward is about an institutionalized young woman who is terrorized by a ghost. The cast list includes actresses Amber Heard and Danielle Panabaker.

Source: The Seattle Times

PLOT: In a nameless 1959 town, a young woman named Kristen is found, crazed, in the woods before a burning church. She’s taken to a foreboding psychiatric hospital run by the ominous Dr. Stringer, where she meets an eccentric (natch) group of half-nutty girls, as well as a couple of unsavory orderlies. But it’s when the lights go out that things get really unsettling, as Kristen begins to see a ghostly figure roaming the halls – and even entering her room. Before long Kristen wises up to the fact that Chamberlain Psychiatric Hospital contains a very dark secret – and everyone but her seems to know what it is…

Danielle Panabaker will star opposite Amber Heard in The Ward, a psychological horror thriller that John Carpenter is directing for Echo Lake Entertainment and A Bigger Boat.

The story follows a girl (Heard) who is admitted to a psychiatric ward, meets other girls there with distinct personalities and discovers a mysterious girl haunting the halls at night.

Panabaker plays a patient in the institution, a snobbish girl who flirts with orderlies and faces electroshock therapy.

Mamie Gummer (Taking Woodstock) also has been cast as a patient.