Actress Amber Heard has said that she didn’t listen to those who told her being openly bisexual would hurt her career and has urged gay Hollywood actors to come out of the closet.
In a wide-ranging chat at The Economist’s annual Pride & Prejudice conference last Thursday, Amber opened up about her experience after coming out as bisexual in a 2010 interview with website After Ellen.
“Everyone around me strongly advised me against it [but] I would rather go down for being who I am than to have risen for being something I’m not,” she said.
“I was in a relationship and I just never hid it. I was always out. I was an activist. I went to protests… An outlet specifically asked me who I was there with that night and what that person was to me, and I just answered honestly.
“I never have seen myself as defined by the person I’m with, the same way you’re not defined by the hair color of your partner. I watched as I quickly became not actress Amber Heard, but out lesbian Amber Heard.”
The actress, who was seen in 2015’s The Danish Girl and will travel to the Gold Coast this year to film new superhero flick Aquaman, went on to say she feels a “particular responsibility” to be open about her sexuality.
“I have a lot of lesbian and gay friends that are very well-known working actors and the status quo is just that you answer, ‘My private life is my private life,’ and it’s used as, not a euphemism but a nice way to dodge it,” she said.
“I didn’t see any worth in that, because while that is true, while my private life is valuable to me, I knew that being in Hollywood… the burden was on me in a different way than if I had a different kind of job with less public attention around it.
“I saw myself as being in this unique position, and as with any unique gift, it comes with a unique responsibility.”
“It did impact my career; it was difficult. Everyone told me it would end my career without a doubt… I was asked ‘How is anyone going to invest in you romantically if they think you’re unavailable?’ I said, ‘Watch me do it.’”
She called on male Hollywood actors to join other queer Hollywood names such as Kristen Stewart, Cara Delevingne and Evan Rachel Wood to take on the responsibility.
“If every gay man in Hollywood that I know personally came out tomorrow, then this would be a nonissue in a month,” she said.
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