You may be unfamiliar with the name Amber Heard right now, but you won't be for much longer. Following small parts in Friday Night Lights and Alpha Dog, Heard marks her debut in the lead of Jonathan Levine's clever horror movie All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, released in the UK this week and in the US on 25th April.

RT sat down with Heard to talk Mandy Lane, dispel the myths of Hollywood glamour and learn more about her upcoming role in the Judd Apatow-produced comedy, Pineapple Express.

Congratulations on Mandy Lane, it's been receiving great notices from critics and the support of audiences.

Amber Heard: It does say great things about the director, I must say, because we made it for no money and in a very short amount of time in the middle of nowhere. It was really, really difficult in terms of how they make things comfortable for big-budget films. This lacked everything and yet it is so much better than 99% of the things out there that are made for ten times as much. It's just a testament to its artistic merit and the director's brilliance.

How did you first find out about it?

AH: I got the script in LA and I loved it. This was a movie that was really under the radar; no one was really talking about it. It didn't have much money and subsequently it didn't get much attention right off the bat. I found this script and I said, "Whoa, I want this movie, I have to do this." And it's different; there are so many things you get where it feels like you're reading the same girl over and over again. And then I read this script and I thought it was truly different and that it could be done well.

The director and the writer went through great pains to put into the script some of the descriptions of the shots and the direction they had artistically but a lot of it came when I met Jonathan Levine, the director, and talked with him about the part. There was a connection and that's what it's all about; the director's collaboration with the actor. My vision and his vision, the collaboration and the connection can make or break a film and in this case it made it. I knew instantly from meeting him that I had so much trust in him. I was like, "OK, I'll be your scream queen." We just connected, and I'm very proud.

When you first hear the title you expect a teen sex comedy, and every scene seems to be designed to make you think it's taking a different direction.

AH: That's what's really brilliant about it, it kind-of mocks you a little bit and your expectations. It plays into, "Oh, you wanted to see a teen slasher film with the hot blonde," and it mocks you for that in a sense. It's brilliant, because it plays into the expectations and it plays into the fact that you went and saw it with those expectations and how wrong you were and how simple your expectations were for what it could have been.



When you're working on a smaller film does it make things more intimate in terms of your relationships on set?

AH: Well, for this film I didn't really spent a lot of time with the other actors. I isolated myself to maintain some sort of organic sense of the character. In general, especially with an independent film, no one's there to make money, or to be famous even, they're there to make a piece of art because they liked the project most likely. If you're not going to make a lot of money and you're not going to go to a beautiful exotic location and you're not necessarily going to be a celebrity from it, there's a real sense of camaraderie that you have with the other people that are in the situation you are. You're like, "We've been filming in a field for sixteen hours, I'm not making any money, but I can sleep well at night." There's a camaraderie there that's subsequent to a sense of just sharing a connection with other artists.

It must ruin the illusion people have of Hollywood to find you covered in gallons of fake blood in a mud pit in a field.

AH: It's funny that you say that; everyone has these expectations, whether they're subconscious or not, of the glamour and how much fun that you can have in LA and I went with those same expectations. This was my first shoot, my first leading role. I fly to my hometown, funnily enough, to film and I stand out in this field waiting for my hair and make-up. Instead of the chair, instead of the lights, I stand in the middle of a field and have, literally, a bucket of freshly-dug mud dumped on my head. I thought to myself, "This isn't exactly what I expected!" As I'm lying in a mud-pit having fake blood squirted in my mouth, I think, I love my job!