Amber Heard on Her Sexuality: "I Don't Identify as Anything"

In an interview for Allure's December issue, the Justice League actress opened up about her sexuality

By Elyse Dupre Nov 14, 2017 6:22 PMTags

Amber Heard isn't going to label her sexuality.

When asked if she identified as bisexual in an interview for Allure's December issue, the Justice League actress said, "I don't identify as anything." 

"I'm a person. I like who I like," she told the magazine. "I happened to be dating a woman, and people started taking pictures of us walking to our car after dinner. I [was] holding her hand, and I realized that I have two options: I can let go of her hand and, when asked about it, I can say that my private life is my private life. Or, I could not let go and own it."

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Clearly, Heard decided to own it.

The Danish Girl actress has received pushback from her Hollywood peers for her sexuality. Having starred opposite Nicolas Cage in the 2011 film Drive Angry and opposite her ex Johnny Depp in The Rum Diary and London Fields, Heard was told she was throwing away her career as the romantic lead.

"They pointed to no other working romantic lead, no other actress, that was out," she told Allure. "I didn't come out. I was never in. It's limiting, that LGBTQ thing. It served a function as an umbrella for marginalized people to whom rights were being denied, but it loses its efficacy because of the nuanced nature of humanity."

She also said, "As we become more educated and expand the facts of our nature, we keep adding letters. It was a great shield, but now we're stuck behind it. It's so important to resist labels. I don't care how many letters you add. At some point, it's going to spell ‘WE ARE HUMAN.' "

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This isn't the first time Heard has discussed her sexual orientation. At The Economist's second annual Pride and Prejudice event in New York, Heard talked about the discrimination she faced after publicly speaking about her sexuality in 2010; although, she said she was "always out" with her family and friends.

"Then I realized the gravity of what I had done and why so many people—studio execs, agents, advisors—did not want this coming before my name," she said at the time. "I became attached to a label. I've never seen myself defined by the person I'm with."

Despite the challenges she faced, Heard continued to be an activist and push for equality.

"History tends to favor those on the right side of it," she told Allure. "Whether it's civil rights in 1962 or suffrage in 1914 or gay rights in 2007. All of these debates seemed specific at the time, but if you pull back to the macro, there's a trend: fairness. Justice is not as nuanced or delicate as it's made out to be. And as the texture of our culture changes, [equality] will manifest differently in our debates."

Heard has been romantically linked to quite a few famous people. In August, she called it quits with tech mogul Elon Musk. She was also previously married to Johnny Depp, whom she officially divorced earlier this year. Less than a week after she filed for divorce in May 2016, she was granted a domestic restraining order against the Pirates of the Caribbean actor.

Check out Allure to read her full interview.