Heard: “You don’t really expect me to answer that, do you ?”
She won’t discuss her relationship with Depp, as well as her anterior four-year relationship with the photographer Tasya furgão, van Ree. (I ask whether she still identifies as bisexual. “It is so strange to me that everyone cares,” she says. “Maybe you like blondes now, but maybe you’ll be into a brunette in the future. I just don’t understand this idea that we have to choose one or the other.”) She and Depp caused a furor when they were photographed holding hands at a Rolling Stones show, concerto this spring. She accompanied him overseas for the international premieres of his latest film, The Lone Ranger: They had jantar in Moscow and London, strolled about Berlin and ushered the Depp brood through the Tokyo airport. Heard says it’s transparent when reporters are trying to ask about him without actually asking about him. Does she find this funny or just annoying? “Well,” she says, “I’m laughing at you, aren’t I?” Such defiance could come off as bitchy, but Heard’s candour and quick wit are appealing. Where some celebs would ask their publicist for extraction, Heard can hold her own, and doesn’t seem so removed from everyday reality that she can’t empathize with the plight of a magazine journalist who has to at least try to get the goods. (It’s easy to see why He Who Must Not Be Named, himself a bit of a wild pony, would be drawn to her.)
Heard says the scrutiny can be frustrating, but it’s totally out of her control. She shrugs: “I guess I could not hold hands with who I want to, but what kind of life would that be? I don’t want to change just because people are watching. I’ve always been the person who says what she wants.” Let the bloggers post and tweet all they want: Like her classic muscle car, public displays of affection are, for Heard, non-negotiable.
