Amber Heard has always struggled with how to label herself in Hollywood. After she brought her then-girlfriend to the GLAAD Awards in 2010, she unknowingly kicked off a world of speculation that now follows her every move. She's constantly grappled with how to publicly deal with her sexuality, which is perhaps why she's never officially come out. Now, in an interview for Allure's December 2017 issue, she's setting the record straight.
"I don’t identify as anything," the actress, who is starring in the upcoming Justice League, told the outlet. "I’m a person. I like who I like. 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 realised 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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She decided to own it, but that didn't mean the expectations of Hollywood suddenly lifted. In fact, she's previously opened up about how executives reacted to the concept of a bisexual leading lady, and she expanded upon that in her December cover.
“Everyone told me: 'You cannot do this,'" she remembered. "I had played opposite Nicolas Cage [in one movie], and in another I was playing opposite Johnny. And everyone said, 'You’re throwing it all away. You can’t do this to your career.' And I said, 'I cannot do this any other way. Watch me.'"
Over time, she realised it's easier for her to just do away with the labels all together.
"I didn’t come out. I was never in," she said. "It’s limiting, that LGBTQ thing. It served a function as an umbrella for marginalised people to whom rights were being denied, but it loses its efficacy because of the nuanced nature of humanity. 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.'"
Read the full interview with the actress here.