The Rum Diary - Amber Heard interview

AMBER Heard talks about working with director Bruce Robinson and leading man Johnny Depp in The Rum Diary and some of the challenges she faced. She also talks about being a character actress in a leading lady’s body and why she feels opportunities for women of a particular look in Hollywood are still at a premium. She was speaking at a UK round table, after which she shook my hand and said it was nice seeing me again (following our interview for Drive Angry).

Q. What attracted you to the film and how did you get involved?
Amber Heard: Well, what didn’t attract me to this project? This movie had it all. I did not think about it for too long, let’s put it that way. It was a beautiful story, written by one of my favourite authors, told by Bruce Robinson – who’s a genius, in my opinion, opposite Johnny Depp – didn’t hurt, it was shot in Puerto Rico – not a bad thing. I didn’t have a long list of cons in this case. I also liked my character. I liked Chenault.

I liked the juxtaposition – I liked that she looks like this archetype of a leading lady, this 1950s housewife-in-the-making, the kind of iconic symbol of a woman at that time, this commodity or something that represents the elite status or rather, what the elite status strives to obtain in life or what they value in life and she kind of looks like that, superficially and represents all these things very well on the surface but yet is not that underneath – she’s flawed and kind of vulnerable and fiercely independent and rebellious and I relate to a lot of those qualities and like that she’s not what she looks like, so I was turned onto the character as well.

Q. Are you aware that – according to Bruce – you had the part when you walked in the room?
Amber Heard: No, I – damn that Bruce Robinson! I swear. I’m plotting some sort of revenge for that, because it was such a gruelling process they put me through. It was many auditions, it was not the most relaxing of circumstances, to walk into a room with Johnny Depp and Bruce Robinson and, you know, have some sort of ill-fitting wig on, brand new lines you’ve just prepared and to have to go through this process over and over again, each time knowing you could lose a job like this, an opportunity like this. It’s an intensely uncomfortable situation to be in and I did it over and over again, so when he says things like that I want to reach over the table and… [laughs]. But I’m charmed, I’m charmed, of course. It’s sweet.

Q. And how was Bruce with his directing? He made similar comments, along the lines of how lovely it was working with everyone, how easy it was to direct them. Is it true that he was so laid back and let you do your thing on set?
Amber Heard: He’s very laid back and I think it comes from a confidence, that he knows what he wants to create. He’s an artist and I think true artists know where their strengths lie and they know where their weaknesses take them and I think he allows other artists to do their thing and I think at the end of the day he knows what he wants and will work around the various personalities that are his paint. I think he does a great job. I love working with him… he’s perfect for me to work with, but if he keeps saying that I got the part upon walking in the room then I will kill him.

Q. He gives you a hell of an entrance, coming up through the water. How was that scene to film?
Amber Heard: It was very difficult to film that scene, actually, because it was our third attempt to film in that bay – it’s a very deep, very cold bay that I think the US Navy uses for some sort of practice of some kind… something military. So, it’s very cold, very deep, the water is murky on a good day but it was also raining and it was our third attempt to film there because we kept getting rained out, and so you can imagine, the water was just… uncomfortable. I couldn’t even see my elbow in the water! Bruce told me that they had a diver down there to kind of ward off any creatures that were dangerous and I said: “You have A diver, like ONE diver?!? What is he going to do if a shark comes?”

Anyway, later, at some point, not far after filming that, we were on the boat and we were standing on the edge of the boat kind of smoking and looking on at the bay at night and there were lights hitting the water and we just kept seeing glimpses of these creatures swimming past the boat. With the light directly on that water when you could actually see what was in the water, I was mortified that I was swimming in there, pretty much naked, just a few nights before that. I said: “If I had seen what I see now, I would not have… we would have had to rewrite that scene to something else!” Because it was not friendly-looking, what was down there…

Q. A lot’s been made of the fact that this is a story of a young Hunter S. Thompson and it’s a tricky territory with such a well-known figure. As a fan of his writing, how do you think Bruce and Johnny approached that and pulled that off?
Amber Heard: I think what makes this movie so great is that it didn’t set out to change the book, it didn’t set out to compete with the book, it just meant to augment an already wonderful perspective on life. And I’ve made movies that were adaptations before and I’ve been kind of frustrated by the process because, you know that old axiom, ‘It’s never as good as the book’? It’s often true because nothing competes with your own imagination. When you’re reading a book and you imagine something in your head, nothing’s going to compete with that. I feel like Bruce did so well because he didn’t try and compete with the book, he didn’t try and set any new rules – there’s an innocence and a sweetness to the book and I think he kind of did that while still protecting the absurdity of the subject matter.

Q. And Johnny Depp? He’s probably one of the greatest screen actors of his generation. Was it intimidating working alongside him?
Amber Heard: I guess it must have been but luckily you just don’t remember what that kind of pain feels like. We’re just not built to remember, to be able to accurately recall what that feels like, what that kind of pain feels like, but it must have been. For me, I take from this project so many things and they’re all so positive. Working with Johnny was wonderful. I didn’t know what to expect and didn’t really know what I was getting into, I couldn’t have known. But he was – anything I could have expected, he just far surpasses. He’s wonderful to work with. Everybody on set respects him and likes him and it’s because he brings so much to work with him, he’s such a wonderful presence, people are drawn to him in a way that I’ve really never seen before. Perhaps that’s why he is the movie star that he is. And I also respect his work ethic – I mean, he’s a true character actor, trapped in a leading man’s body and I respect that.

Q. And Puerto Rico? On screen it looks great, it looks like it was a really fun place to shoot, the beaches and even the carnival scenes. What was your experience? Any highlights?
Amber Heard: Yeah, we really had it tough on this gig. It was rough. This whole movie is a highlight. Puerto Rico is very much a character in our story, it’s an integral part of our story. It provided the impetus for Hunter S. Thompson to write this novel in the first place, I mean it’s very much – the platform that Puerto Rico just is lends itself well to our story, it kind of mirrors it in many ways. There’s this duality to Puerto Rico that very much encompasses the struggle that our book sets out to expose. Puerto Rico has two flags and two anthems and two songs and two classes and two kinds of people and there’s a duality to Puerto Rico, just in and of itself, just being half America, half not, it’s a weird place and that lends itself perfectly to the struggle in our story between art and commerce and life and all these things that we see in our stories, it just mirrors itself well in the book and in Puerto Rico in general.

Q. How difficult or easy is it for you to constantly be a character actress in a leading lady’s body?
Amber Heard: Hmm. Thank you. I hope I am. I mean, I try to be. It’s damn near impossible, because the parts aren’t there. We categorise women in one of two ways and if you’re seen as beautiful or sexy then your only options in terms of character descriptions are beautiful, sexy, cute – and that’s it, actually. And that affords you a certain amount of opportunity but that opportunity ultimately leads to a spark, never a flame. And it’s a bright spark, it’s a pretty spark or a sexy spark, but that’s it. In the other category there’s so much more to do – you can be seen as witty, intelligent, independent, you can be seen as a bitch, you can be seen as vulnerable, you can be seen as smart or funny and we might take you seriously as a politician or as a writer or as whatever as a character actress and you can be all these things, yet you can not be beautiful or sexy.

If we see you as sexy, you are out of that category. And because we compartmentalise women and our female characters in that way, it’s incredibly limiting. I very much want to be in the latter category where I feel there’s opportunity for a flame, a real fire. I want to be able to create characters for as long as I can and I want to tell stories for as long as I can but unfortunately I’m not given those opportunities because I’m often boxed into the former category and I will continue to try and blend the two as best I can. I don’t know if I’ll be successful, but I’ll try.

Q. Does that mean that you’d perhaps follow that path of maybe producing your own material?
Amber Heard: Yes, I’m developing something right now that I don’t know if I even will be acting in and it would be wonderful to see this movie come to life, but it will be my third movie to have produced. And yes, that would be great. I think that’s the only way to get these good parts for women is to just make them yourself, I guess.

Q. That touches on something else we talked about earlier, about the film having an almost 1940s or 1950s quality, it has such great fizzy dialogue, so did that attract you to it and how was it working with the script?
Amber Heard: Yeah, I love period pieces, I love things that have a vintage feel to them, just because there’s a certain texture to them that we just don’t have anymore. In fact I think I’ve been stuck in the 50s or 60s for a while now! But I like that, I like that quality very much. It’s a style, that’s what it is, it’s style and I think we’ve lost a certain appreciation for style.

Q. Do you have a favourite scene in the film?
Amber Heard: Oh, that’s a good one. I love the dancing scene. Also, it’s my character’s fall from grace… it’s the gritty… the book exposes a little bit more tragedy, but I think they steered away from that in the movie because they wanted to not take advantage of that moment. I think we get it and we get what happens and that’s enough, but I loved the dancing scene. It’s her fall from grace.

Q. Bruce said he was very sorry he was made to cut the dancing scene in half, but was there anything else that was cut out that you were sorry to see go?
Amber Heard: Oh, really? You know, I haven’t seen the latest edition of the movie – I saw it a long time ago and it was a very early draft so I don’t really know what’s in it. But we had so many, I mean I was making this movie at one point and I’m in the car with Johnny Depp, in this ’58 Corvette convertible, driving up the coast of Puerto Rico on a beautiful summer day and we were listening to the radio and driving ourselves. We weren’t on a picture car, we were just driving – and I thought: “No matter how this comes out, this is great, I like this scene.”

Q. Did you get behind the wheel? Because I remember you terrorised the stunt man on Drive Angry?
Amber Heard: Yeah, I did not. They did not let me anywhere near the steering wheel of that car. And that’s probably a good thing – I would have done significant damage to it.

Q. Were you on the set with Giovanni Ribisi at all? Because we heard an anecdote about him staying in character the whole time…
Amber Heard: I only had one scene with him and it was when he blasts Hitler [a recording of Hitler speaking], when he comes in as Hitler and interrupts our passion, but he’s… it was my first and very memorable introduction to the madness that is Giovanni Ribisi-slash-his character.

Q. What was that like to work around?
Amber Heard: It’s great! I love lunatics. I love them.

Q. But you would never go down the Method path to quite the same extent?
Amber Heard: It’s a funny thing to me… I think the moment I decide to take on any sort of specific set of rules or guidelines or methods when approaching something as organic as acting is, it would be a struggle for me to try and commit to a set of rules, in any sense. Sometimes certain tricks work and other times you have to let all of that go. That’s kind of my job, being prepared for anything.

Q. You were talking about wanting to make the jump from the one category to the other. Is there anybody whose career in particular you’re sort of looking towards, in that respect?
Amber Heard: I think part of my frustration is that there is one, really two references that people always fall back on. I don’t even need to say these women’s names – you know them. That’s the frustrating thing, that there’s been two. You know, Charlize Theron in Monster and Halle Berry in Monster’s Ball. Huh! That’s the ticket – I need to do a movie with the word “Monster” in it! I figured it out! Thank you so much, gentlemen – I’ve got work to do. I am producing a movie called ‘Monster Something’ [laughs].

But both of them had to abandon the characteristics in category one in order to be appreciated for the character actresses that they are and had always been. Monster did not make Charlize Theron a great actress – she’s been one, it’s just no parts allowed her the opportunity to showcase it. I think that’s a perfect example of the frustration, i.e. it’s a frustrating reality that I work in. And they both had to take all sex appeal away from their characters in order to be respected and seen in a serious light and that’s frustrating. It’s really frustrating. I kind of feel like although I would love the opportunity to gain some weight [laughs], but part of me is frustrated by the fact that I would have to do that in order to be taken seriously. Why can’t I just be taken seriously? I don’t know.

Q. Is there any sense that that might be beginning to change? People point to Kathryn Bigelow winning the Oscar and the success of female-driven films like Bridesmaids, which came from Kristen Wiig and even The Help this year?
Amber Heard: I’m so optimistic – I went and saw that movie, Bridesmaids… I went and saw it twice and bought my ticket and went with all my friends to show support for a project that I am so glad did well. But we still make up like one, maybe two percent of the directors and until we make up a bigger or I guess a more significant majority or proportion of the film-makers or until we have a larger stake in the prospective makers, then we won’t accurately accomplish that representation.

Q. You talked earlier about Bruce Robinson being a genius. I wanted to know if you’d seen Withnail & I and what you thought of it?
Amber Heard: Oh, yes! I saw Withnail & I a long time ago, long before I heard of this movie and I remember when they said Bruce Robinson, I said: “Who is that? Oh, the Withnail & I guy? Oh, he’s perfect. Perfect!” I thought to myself there could be nobody better to make this movie and I think I was right.