From Envy

Amber Heard is every bit as smart as she is stunning. That’s about the only scary thing we could find about the 23-year-old native Texan, who professes a love for making horror films. Her résumé is impressive, scoring a host of gigs in a lengthy list of movie and TV roles in just five short years on the West Coast. Last year, she played the high school girlfriend of Seth Rogen in the stoner comedy Pineapple Express. Next year, she will find herself wrapped up in the center of a love triangle opposite Johnny Depp in the highly anticipated film adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s novel, The Rum Diaries. In her latest film, a remake of 1987’s The Stepfather, set to release in October, Heard stars as Kelly, the girlfriend of leading man Penn Badgley, whose character, Michael, returns home from military school to find his mother living with a sketchy new man. Drama and violence ensue. We played attentive host to the former model and cover girl as she dished on dreams, screams, travel, skipping out on prom, running from murderers and, of course, Texas.

ENVY: What was life like growing up in Austin?

Amber Heard: Austin is a really eclectic place with great diversity and appreciation of art and sense of counterculture. Austin has a certain feeling to it—a certain texture, certain taste—and although I am through-and-through an Austinite, my family and my roots are very, very grounded in Texas. So there is something really nice about how distinct Austin is, but when you look at my whole family package, I’m a Texan.


How did your family feel about you dropping out of high school at 17 to pursue acting?

My parents are good parents, so naturally they were worried—worried to death. However, I have always been a strong individual. I’ve always been very dedicated. I am very, very motivated towards whatever task I made for myself. One day I told them, “Tomorrow I am getting on a plane to go to LA.” I gave them one day’s notice. It wasn’t the ideal way to pitch this idea, but I did it, and they knew that I was going to do it anyway.

What was it like as a teenager hopping on a plane, not knowing what to expect?

I think as a teenager, as a young person, the thrill of excitement can completely overshadow the apprehension of the circumstance or the apprehension and anxiety of the unknown. I was so thrilled with the possibilities and excited to see new places and meet new people. I hardly ever related to teenagers. I didn’t feel one bit of remorse for missing prom; let’s just put it that way. I had no intention of going, even if I had been in school that long.


Did you have a plan back then?

I had gone to New York when I was 16 … and I remember thinking, I’m just going to stay here. I’m going to stay here for a while and see how [modeling] works out. Of course, it didn’t really work out for me. I didn’t enjoy it, and I wasn’t very successful at it. I remember making a phone call back to a friend in high school, and I was hearing these stories about who is dating who and who so-and-so is going to go with to the prom and who is wearing this, and I just felt this enormous disconnect from my peers. I was worried about paying my bills, and I was really worried about how I was going to get to the next go-see and how I was going to feed myself, and this preoccupation with prom, for instance, was not something I related to at all. At that point I knew there was no going back.

At 17, you arrive in LA. Did you have a moment or event that left you thinking, “Wow, I’m really not in Texas anymore?”

[Laughs] No, luckily Austin is a very open-minded and eccentric place, full of diversity, and it has a lot of the same California kind of core, in a way. I was really not shocked by anything.

You jumped right in, scoring several roles in TV shows and movies. When was it that you realized, “I can actually do this?”

When I was in Austin, I went to school very far away from where my parents lived, and I had to travel about an hour each way just to get into the neighborhood of my school. On the way back home from school, I would take the city bus. One of my stops in Downtown Austin was on the drag at this theater called the Dobie Theater. I used to make a habit out of getting off the bus, catching as many movies as I could to still be able to catch the last bus out to where my folks lived. I was really moved once by this independent [film] that we have all now heard of, but it was right after it came out, called Whale Rider. The director of that movie was Niki Caro. I got out to LA, got an audition in the first month or month and a half for a film she was directing called North Country, and I got the part. I remember I had been in LA all of a month and a half or two months and I got to [the] set, and I was absolutely flabbergasted that I had this opportunity and had this whole circle come to fruition. I really did see a dream and a movement in my life that kind of took me full circle, and I almost felt like I was seeing the results before it even started. That’s a long answer, I know. [laughs]

It’s a good one. Let’s talk about your role as Kelly in the upcoming horror flick, The Stepfather. How did that come to pass?

I was in London promoting All The Boys Love Mandy Lane, which is a horror film I had done years before, and I was kind of excited thinking how much I missed the genre, to be honest with you. I really enjoy making horror films. I’m a huge fan, and more than I am a fan of the genre, I like making the movies. Horror films are the best movies to make. They come with the best fans; they come with best excitement. It’s a totally different game, and I was thinking to myself how much I missed the genre. I got a phone call while I was in England, between breaks during this press conference from the Sony guys who were kind of putting this film together, and they asked me if I wanted to be in this movie.

Many actors draw from personal experiences to really get into their character’s emotions. Assuming you have never been chased by an axe-wielding lunatic, how do you prepare for such a role?

I try to immerse myself into situations that affect or could affect the way I perceive the story. For instance, I hang out in places where I could be chased by a man with an axe or a circular saw … It’s hard with horror films to really prepare. I mean, there is a certain element of fantasy that is there that negates the real-life preparation any actors take on.

Is there an art to the “horror scream?”

[Laughs] Yes, yes, there is. I would have to say that I am trying to sharpen my skills and my craft, and I have explored all the very many different ways one can play a victim and one can play a villain or one can scream. Fake blood, in and of itself, is an art form.

What drives you as an actress?

I am a gypsy. I like travel, and there’s an unrest in me that cannot imagine a life that does not require or allow me to travel. I cannot imagine a life where I knew what I was going to do next week. I also like to perform. I like theater, I like the arts and I like the aspect of participating in this fantasy. I like being someone else and then trying their shoes on and taking them off at the end of the day.

In keeping with that theme, what do you hope to accomplish in your career in the long run? Do you have specific benchmarks or goals?

I guess my point is that I’d like to not have an answer to that question. The most fascinating part of my job is the unknown, the fact that I can’t plan it. I love that I don’t know where I will be next week. I will be filming this movie [The Ward]; however, I don’t know what scenes I will do. I don’t know if I’ll be jumping through a plate glass window or setting a barn on fire. I don’t know if I will be crying and screaming or if I will be running from a murderer. This is the part of life that I think is dulled down by normal 9-to-5s—that unexpected excitement. In the long run, I have no idea what country I will be in; in one year, I don’t know where I will be in my life. That’s the whole point.

Okay, one final item of business. Who has the best Mexican food, Texas or California?

Oh, Texas! Texas.

Good answer.