You might not recognize Amber Heard as Mera in Aquaman.
That bright red hair isn't her usual look, for one thing.
Most of the time she's blonde, and looks much less like a warrior mermaid.
Let's take a look at the major stepping stones in Amber Heard's career.
Heard was still in her teens when North Country came out in 2005, and she wasn't featured
in any of the ads or trailers.
The focus of the film was Charlize Theron, who plays Josey Aimes, a female iron miner
who takes a stand against sexual harassment.
A young Amber Heard plays the teenage Josey in some disturbing flashbacks.
Heard makes an impression here, despite her lack of screentime.
She looks enough like Charlize Theron to believably play a younger version of the same character,
but she's also already a strong actress in her own right, delivering an effective performance
in some difficult-to-watch scenes.
Heard was the female lead in Hidden Palms, a 2007 CW series from Kevin Williamson, creator
of Dawson's Creek.
The show was a teen drama about dark secrets lurking underneath the sun-drenched surface
of an affluent Palm Springs neighborhood.
Heard played Greta, the mysterious girl next door who's immediately fascinating to the
series lead, but who's also at the center of several local mysteries.
The series received a summer order of eight initial episodes, and was canceled due to
low ratings by the time all eight had aired.
It's largely forgotten today, but it did raise Amber Heard's profile enough to help her launch
her film career, which no doubt benefited from this show ending too soon for her to
be tied to it.
Never Back Down was a teen movie about mixed martial arts fighting, which probably seemed
like a really good idea in 2008.
"Those look kind of cute on you."
"Eww...
They're still sweaty."
It's an extremely by-the-book plot, in which a teenage boy at a new school must learn to
be the best MMA fighter in order to defeat a bully and prove himself to all the other
kids.
However, Amber Heard had plenty to do as the female lead of the movie.
She starts out as the girlfriend of the MMA-fighting bully, who tricks the protagonist into a fight
he's not ready for.
Even in a largely unmemorable movie, it was a showy role for a young actress like Heard,
and it helped launch her into bigger and better parts.
Pineapple Express, coming right on the heels of Never Back Down, was the movie that really
made Amber Heard a star.
She plays a high school senior in an ill-advised relationship with the movie's stoner process
server hero, played by Seth Rogen.
Produced by Judd Apatow and directed by indie darling David Gordon Green, Pineapple Express
was both a hit and a much-discussed comedy of 2008.
Rogen and co-star James Franco were already big stars, but it took at least three people's
careers to the next level: Green himself, supporting player Danny McBride, and of course
rising ingenue Amber Heard.
Heard had only one scene in the 2009 post-apocalyptic horror comedy Zombieland, but it was one of
the most memorable in the movie.
Jesse Eisenberg's Columbus explains how he became aware of the zombie plague when his
attractive next door neighbor, played by Heard, sought refuge in his apartment after being
attacked by what she thought was a crazed homeless man trying to bite her.
Naturally, Eisenberg wakes the next morning to find that Heard has become a zombie.
The whole point of her character here is that she's a basic hot girl who turns into a monster,
but Heard still somehow takes that premise and makes it charming, and pretty scary:
In 2011 Heard returned to TV, but found no more success this time around than she did
with Hidden Palms.
The Playboy Club was at least splashier to start with, a historical drama for NBC about
the women working at the original Playboy Club in 1961 Chicago.
Heard played Maureen, a young woman who becomes a Playboy Bunny shortly after arriving in
the city on the run from a dark past.
The nature of Maureen's past was never explored, as it turns out, because The Playboy Club
was cancelled after only three episodes.
The Rum Diary is another example of Heard taking a pretty typical "hot girl" part and
making it her own.
This 2011 film by Bruce Robinson was based on a Hunter S. Thompson book and stars Johnny
Depp as a down-on-his-luck writer who takes a job in San Juan, Puerto Rico during the
early 1960s.
Heard plays a girl he meets while he's in a boat and she's skinny-dipping, and she goes
off to become the center of a love triangle between him and a shady realtor played by
Aaron Eckhart.
The Rum Diary is how Heard and Depp first met, leading to a relationship that started
in 2012, became a marriage in 2015, and ended in 2016 with Heard filing for divorce and
accusing Depp of domestic abuse.
All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is a slasher-style horror movie about an unusual high school
girl, and the secrets she does her best to keep as the other teens around her start dying.
Heard played the title role, and it might have been her breakout part if the movie had
come out as originally planned.
It was filmed in 2006, before almost everything else on this list, with a 20-year-old Heard
perfectly cast as the mysterious Mandy.
Unfortunately, the Weinstein Company declined to distribute it, and the company they handed
it off to went out of business.
The movie went unreleased in the United States for seven years, before finally coming out
on video in 2013, after Amber Heard was enough of a star to get people to watch it.
The sequel to 2010's Machete was not a success at the box office or among critics, but it
was the kind of sequel that made sense for the over-the-top character played by Danny
Trejo and the unique sensibility of director Robert Rodriguez.
The supporting cast of Machete Kills features a parade of beautiful women.
Amber Heard is still a standout, however.
She plays Blanca Vasquez, a beauty queen who's also a secret agent and Machete's handler
on his mission to stop a madman from launching a nuclear missile at Washington, D.C.
Interestingly, Amber Heard plays a glamorous government assassin again in 2014's 3 Days
To Kill, but in a slightly less outrageous context.
The film stars Kevin Costner as a veteran CIA agent with an estranged family and terminal
cancer.
Heard's younger and more ruthless agent is tasked with manipulating him into hunting
down one last target by offering him an experimental cure for his illness.
3 Days To Kill is one of those "Aging Baby Boomer" action movies, where an older man
proves that he still has what it takes to get the job done.
Thankfully, unlike some movies of this type, the protagonist's focus remains on his family,
meaning that Heard is never asked to be a May/December love interest for Costner.
2015's Magic Mike XXL was a phenomenon, far more so than the original Magic Mike.
The first movie was a drama about male strippers, whereas the sequel was a feel-good celebration
of male strippers, which unsurprisingly made it a huge hit among women, as well as gay
men and pretty much anyone who's comfortable watching muscular men dance with their shirts
off.
Amber Heard was one of many fresh cast members to join for the sequel, playing a new love
interest for Magic Mike, played by Channing Tatum.
At first her photographer character seems likely to be a one-night stand, but after
she and Mike mutually decide not to have sex, she shows back up later in the movie and they
build more of a relationship.
One thing that's clear in looking back at Amber Heard's career so far is that she's
obviously been chosen for many roles because of how beautiful she is.
However, as we've seen again and again, what makes her interesting in those roles is the
intelligence she always displays, adding depth to characters who weren't necessarily created
to have any.
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