Out actress Amber Heard has called on
closeted male actors to come out gay.
During a “fireside chat” at The
Economist's annual Pride & Prejudice conference in New York,
Heard, 30, said that she was strongly advised against coming out
bisexual.
“I would rather go down for being who
I am than to have risen for being something I'm not,” said Heard,
who came out in 2010.
“I was in a relationship [with a
woman] and I just never hid it … an outlet specifically asked me
who I was there with that night and what that person was to me, and I
just answered honestly,” she
said.
Heard, who recently finalized a divorce
with actor Johnny Depp, said that she saw herself as having a “unique
responsibility” to be open about her sexuality, then added,
pointing to stars such as Kristen Stewart and Evan Rachel Wood, that
coming out is “apparently harder for men.”
“If women can do it and we can change
the way that this conversation is had on a large scale, then men
should be able to do it with as much or more efficacy,” Heard said.
“With all of the power and authority and representation – I mean,
women are so severely underrepresented in film as it is, and that’s
just white women, I’m not even speaking of other minority groups –
if white men can’t change this, then I don’t know who can.”
“If every gay man that I know
personally came out in Hollywood tomorrow… we’ll have a day of
it, national 'you know who you are day.' If all of the gay men I
knew personally came out tomorrow, then this would be a nonissue in a
month,” she added.
The Economist describes Pride &
Prejudice as a global initiative and 24 hour event spanning three
cities – Hong Kong, London and New York – that “aims to advance
the global discussion on LGBT diversity and inclusion, particularly
by focusing on the economic and business costs of LGBT discrimination
and the opportunities that lie in overcoming it.”