Amber Heard covers the July issue of Elle in a malliot swimsuit, 1980s hair combo that looks straight out of a Jane Fonda workout video. The editorial is much better. Amber’s promoting her role in Magic Mike XXL. She’s also promoting her marriage to Johnny Depp. I don’t mean that as shade. Amber talks about Johnny with Elle. Johnny used to sleepily interrupt her interviews, and Amber does leak gossip to her friends (to test them). But she has never discussed their relationship with a magazine until now.

Amber also spends a chunk of the interview complaining about fame and her career. She’s made no secret of wanting to be Action Jolie and disliking “hot” roles. Now Amber’s discussing all of the scripts she has to reject. It’s interesting:

On her marriage to Johnny: “I fall in love again and again. Nothing is a dramatic change. We’ve been together for a long time now, so it’s been a fairly organic process. I have a fiercely independent spirit.”

On the dearth of female roles: “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.”

She hates being placed in a Barbie box: “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.”

Her fear of fame: “The thing that really scares me is the potential of losing my freedom. 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.”

[From Elle]

Piles of scripts. That’s the part that throws Amber’s story off. Everyone knows that female roles in Hollywood are rarely as meaty as men’s roles But Amber tossed in a visual to represent how in demand she is as an actress. She’s promoting Magic Mike XXL, not high art. Maybe I’m reading too much into it. She’s pretty tough in a few movies (All the Boys Love Mandy Lane and Syrup) and has a sultry appeal, but Amber is not an amazing actress. She can turn on the charm or appear cold as ice. Those are her two onscreen modes.

I don’t know when the Elle interview happened, but it also feels like damage control. Amber’s never been open about her private life. Why now?

P.S. Yesterday was Johnny’s 52nd birthday. Entertainment Weekly put together a tribute.