Amber Heard Is Afraid Marriage To Johnny Depp Means ‘Losing My Freedom’

There has been months of speculation surrounding the marriage of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, and there seems to be no end in sight to the gossip hovering over the Depp-Heard union, but in an attempt to stifle those rumors, Amber Heard has finally come forward to talk openly about her marriage to Johnny Depp and what their union means to her on a personal level.

It seems Amber has taken these past months, since the wedding in February, to put herself and her marriage to Johnny in perspective, but Ms. Heard seems to finally have answers to some of the most pressing questions the public has about Amber’s relationship with Johnny.

“Nothing is a dramatic change,” Heard said of married life. “We’ve been together for a long time now, so it’s been a fairly organic process. I have a fiercely independent spirit.”

Amber and Mr. Depp met on the set of The Rum Diary in 2012 and had been dating ever since, until their wedding earlier this year. For the most part, Depp and Heard have kept their relationship away from the spotlight, preferring to keep intimate moments as private as possible.

Amber stresses her need for independence and for the ability to live her life in her own way, which explains the importance Ms. Heard places on privacy.

“The thing that really scares me is the potential of losing my freedom,” Amber said of her union with Depp. “I never want for my life to lose the ability to transverse the world, with freedom and ease. The freedom and ease I have worked so hard to acquire for myself.”

Amber went on to explain that she feels a conflict between her inner personality and the way in which the media seems to represent her, so she struggles against those preconceived notions.

“I feel like I’m constantly fighting against my exterior, or this exterior presentation of myself because of how I look or perhaps because of who I’m with.”

Professionally, Amber is trying to differentiate herself from Johnny, a task she finds daunting at times. Equally as problematic as trying to escape from beneath Depp’s famous shadow is the types of characters Ms. Heard finds herself being asked to portray. Adding her name to a growing list of actresses eager to see gender equality in Hollywood, Amber points out a problem inherent in the female leads found in most feature films.

“I get a stack of scripts, like, once a month, and most of the time, you find these placeholder girls that are there to provide a bounce for the male character. So we know he’s funny because she’s serious and she’s mad at him. We know he’s strong because she needs saving. So really her job is to validate this personality trait of our hero or male. I mean we’re trying to imitate life, and it seems to me a deeply saddening injustice that we are so uncreative and uninterested in developing representations of female life.”

Currently, Johnny Depp is filming Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, which is due for a 2017 release. Meanwhile, Amber Heard has just completed filming on Magic Mike XXL, which is scheduled for a July 1 release date.

[Featured image: Johnny Depp and Amber Heard courtesy of Tibrina Hobson/Getty Images]