Following last year’s defamation trial with ex-husband Johnny Depp, Amber Heard returned to the spotlight this weekend by walking the blue carpet at the Taormina Film Festival premiere of her newest movie In the Fire. Also present at the event were director Conor Allyn and co-star Luca Calvani. Referring to Heard’s allegations that she had been physically abused, followed by the highly-publicized trial that saw the jury heavily siding with Depp, Allyn and Calvani shared some high praise for Heard’s “resilience.”
“I’m so happy that Amber went through something so awful and it didn’t change her as a person,” Allyn told Deadline at the festival. “She’s still the shining light that we explained earlier and to go through something that terrible and be able to come out the other side and be whole, well I can’t imagine it.”
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Calvani also had nothing but kind things to say about Heard. Of working with the Aquaman star, Calvani said Heard was “generous and encouraging” on the set. He further described her as a star who “has that light,” adding, “She glows and she pulls you in and she shares it with everybody. The last person on set will feel it and feel a connection with her.”
“Anyone that suffers that sort of ordeal and is able to overcome it with grace, no matter what side you’re on, no matter what you believe or which social media [outlet] you plug into or whatever your hashtags are, you have to give credit for the incredible journey this woman has been through and she can teach us all a couple of things as far as resilience and courage,” the Italian actor also said.
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Amber Heard Is Back On-Screen in In the Fire
In In the Fire, Heard plays an American psychiatrist in the late 1800s who travels to a remote plantation in Colombia to treat a troubled child. It is up to her to determine if this is a mental health issue or if something more supernatural is happening with the boy.
“This is a movie about people who aren’t talking to each other,” Allyn says of the film. “People who are walled off from one another because of various flaws, fears and biases. We use psychiatry, or the study of psychology, in the film to basically break down those barriers a bit and look past them and find some human connection. The 1890s was right at the genesis of that science and it wasn’t a respected science at all at that time. Still, obviously, mental health is something we’re talking about on a daily basis, and we still don’t understand it.”
Heard will also be back on the big screen later this year with the wide release of the sequel Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. The film had been given multiple release date delays, but it’s now set to hit theaters on Dec. 20, 2023. There had been speculation that Heard would be removed from the movie because of her legal battle with Johnny Depp, but a trailer that screened at CinemaCon confirms her return.
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