Although she’s a sharp activist, there’s no question that Amber Heard is still most known for her stunning exterior (or tumultuous marriage to Johnny Depp and whirlwind romance with Elon Musk). But with the lead female role in ‘Aquaman,’ that’s about to change.
Amber Heard shakes off the season’s first snowflakes as she walks into Bauman Rare Books, a shop on New York’s Upper East Side that keeps its front door locked as it specializes in highly collectible, extremely pricey first editions. The Texas native isn’t exactly dressed for the mini blizzard rocking the city. Wearing a black velvet suit with gold lions, gold turtleneck and black patent leather shoes, her hair is wet — not unlike when Heard makes her first appearance as superheroine Mera in Aquaman — after walking the last few blocks without a hat. The 32-year-old actress is carrying a new copy of Meg Wolitzer’s The Female Persuasion (she picked it up right before our meeting while visiting her agent at WME) but is eyeing a first edition of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. She knows it’s a first edition because the book is dedicated to Rand’s husband, Frank O’Connor, and her lover, Nathaniel Branden. Heard whispers conspiratorially that Rand removed Branden from later editions after he dumped her.
Although she lives in Los Angeles, the shopkeepers here know her, having sold Heard books in the past. To give me a quick visual, she whipped out her phone to show pictures of the stacks of books that line the walls of every room in her home.
“You might have read Huckleberry Finn, but what’s amazing is that this book has its story, too,” she says, pointing to a Mark Twain first edition. “Think of the rooms it was in, the conversations that happened around it, the hands that it’s lived in. I love the smell especially.”
If I’m taken aback by the fact that a high school dropout considered the most beautiful woman in the world by a scientific algorithm can recite the literary classics like a savant, speaks fluent Spanish, is the first American actress to be named Human Rights Champion of the UN Human Rights Office (alongside Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad) and hangs with fellow Rand aficionado Elon Musk, I’m not alone.
“I don’t know why I am surprised, but she is such a well-read person,” says Aquaman director James Wan. “In between takes, every time I saw her she would have just finished a big thick book and was on to a new thick book.”
With Heard, perhaps it’s too easy to judge the book by its cover.
As 2018 comes to a close, the actress finds herself at a crossroads. Over the past two years, she has withstood one of the most contentious Hollywood divorces (she’s legally barred from discussing ex Johnny Depp thanks to their settlement), rebounded with a tabloid-friendly romance with the enigmatic Musk (they called it quits in August 2017 ) and now is single (“I’m in a relationship with me”).
But her thus far uneven career is poised to take off with Aquaman, marking her first female lead in a studio film. The stakes are huge for the movie, which cost $200 million and is Warner Bros.’ first Justice League stand-alone since 2017’s Wonder Woman. The studio is taking the unconventional approach of opening the film first in China, two weeks before it bows Dec. 21 in the U.S.
According to strong early tracking, the film is expected to earn an impressive $65 million in its domestic debut and top Mary Poppins Returns and Transformers spinoff Bumblebee. That number gave Warner Bros. Pictures Group chairman Toby Emmerich has enough confidence to begin talks on a sequel (though no writer has been commissioned yet). Heard, who sources say earned a low-seven-figure salary, would see that payday balloon.
After making her entrance, Mera appears in nearly every scene in the film. “Amber and I would always joke that the movie should be called The Adventures of Mera With Her Sidekick Aquaman,” says Wan. “She has way more powers.”
