Who is Amber Heard? The actress who is at war with Johnny Depp...

She’s the actress at the centre of one of the biggest legal disputes Hollywood has ever seen, after accusing ex-husband Johnny Depp of domestic abuse leading to the actor suing her for defamation. But just who is the actress behind the headlines? Take a look at her life from her early years in Texas to the big screen...

Amber Heard was born on April 22, 1986 in Austin, Texas to her mother Patricia, who died in 2020, and her father, David. As a child, Amber spent a lot of time around horses, learning to ride them with her father as a result of him training them in his spare time. She also partook in beauty pageants but has since renounced her love of this as an adult stating to Glamour that she could no longer ‘support the objectification’.

Amber was desperate to make it big in Hollywood and as a result took up a series small acting jobs in the early 2000s in order to get her name out there. She appeared in music videos for Kenny Chesney and Eisley before landing small supporting roles in the TV shows ‘Jack & Bobby’ and ‘The O.C.’. In 2007, she landed a bigger role playing the love interest of the main character in The CW’s teen drama, ‘Hidden Place’. However only 8 of the 12 planned episodes were aired as a result of low ratings!

It was the year 2008 that signalled a turning point in Amber’s career when she starred in not one but two box office smash hits. She appeared in Judd Apatow’s production of ‘Pineapple Express’ as well as the martial arts movie, ‘Never Back Down’. These two roles helped to secure Amber mainstream recognition and her career was most definitely on the up!

Between 2008 and 2012 as her stardom continued to grow, Amber was romancing fashion photographer Tasya von Ree. During the relationship, Amber legally changed her surname to match her girlfriend's but it was eventually reverted back to her birth name in 2014. In 2009, Amber allegedly struck Tasya’s arm and was arrested for domestic violence but she was never charged and Tasya later claimed it was a "wrongful" accusation and had been "misinterpreted and over-sensationalized".

Amber and Johnny first met each other in 2009 on the set of their movie ‘The Rum Diary’. The pair played each other’s love interests in the movie and Johnny - who was in a relationship with Vanessa Paradis at the time - spoke of the first meeting during his testimony in the defamation trial. He said: “That moment, was, it was, it felt like something, it felt like something I should not be feeling”. Recounting a particular scene where they had to kiss in the shower, he added: “I think there was something in the kiss in the shower that was real”. Amber also said she "felt chemistry" with Depp instantaneously. It would be two years until they met each other again during the promotional tour of the movie.

Following Johnny’s split from his wife and the mother of his two children, Vanessa Paradis, Amber and Johnny began dating before becoming engaged during 2014. It seemed to be a picture perfect Hollywood love story when the pair married in a private LA ceremony in February 2015.

Despite appearing to have a happy romance, by 2016 it all came crashing down. Amber filed for divorce in May of that year and also obtained a restraining order alleging that Johnny was verbally and physically abusive during the relationship and stating it was often while he was under the influence of alcohol and drugs. A settlement in the divorce was eventually reached by January 2017 and Amber lifted her restraining order stating all parts of their marriage were "bound by love". Johnny paid Amber a $7 million settlement which she planned to donate to charity but by 2021 hadn’t done so instead insisting she had to pay millions of dollars to defend herself against Johnny’s later accusations against her.

In the midst of her divorce and just before things went to trial, Amber found love once again with Tesla owner Elon Musk but it wasn’t meant to be as the romance quickly fizzled out in 2018 before Amber and Johnny’s legal battle began to get intense. In December of that year Amber wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post newspaper about the women and domestic abuse cases and the treatment in such cases. Amber did not name Depp but he sued her the following year for $50 million for defamation as a result of it costing him lost acting work.

Another part to the case was when Johnny Depp sued the publishers of British newspaper The Sun for libel in which a 2018 article claimed he was "violent" towards Amber. She testified in the case and sensationally claimed that Johnny tried to kill her "many times". Johnny was unsuccessful in his suit as it was found that the words printed in The Sun were "substantially true".

A year before the main trial began in Virgina, Amber welcomed her first child, Oonagh Paige Heard, via surrogate mother in April 2021. The defamation trial between the two began just three days after Paige’s first birthday. The trial is ongoing and is expected to last up to six weeks with Johnny already having testified and Amber in the midst of taking the stand. A petition has already been widely circulated asking that Amber be axed from her upcoming movie role in ‘Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom’ and it reached over two million supporters in total. Amber later claimed these plans and another plan to get her axed as the face of cosmetics giant L’Oreal were all part of a harassment plan by Johnny. Everyone is waiting with bated breath to see just how the trial plays out!