In our weekly series Anatomy of a Nude Scene, we're going to be taking a look at (in)famous sex scenes and nude scenes throughout cinema history and examining their construction, their relationship to the film around it, and their legacy. This week, Amber Heard leaps off the screen and becomes a sexual icon of her generation in Bret Easton Ellis' The Informers!
Born in Austin, Texas in 1986, Amber Heard probably seems older to a lot of us because she's seemingly been around forever. She's packed a lot of living into her nearly 35 years on this planet, to say the least. Shortly before turning 18, Amber began popping up in music videos and one-off roles on television, before making her simultaneous big screen and nude debuts in 2004's Friday Night Lights just after becoming legal! From there, she became borderline ubiquitous, popping up in everything from Alpha Dog and Pineapple Express to Californication and the short-lived CW series Hidden Palms.
Everything changed in 2011 when she made the film The Rum Diary and became involved with its star, Johnny Depp. The bescarved actor was then the highest paid movie star in the world and Heard entered the stratosphere of stardom seemingly overnight. Of course, it all fell apart in astonishingly fast and disastrous fashion, but their breakup was such a contentious and divisive issue that it's almost impossible to remember what Heard's career was like pre-Depp. And it wasn't all that long ago, either, that most of us first fell hard for her.
While Heard was ubiquitous in those early days of her career, there was something sort of anonymous about her. She was gorgeous but seemed to fade into the background of whatever she was in, failing to get that real breakout kind of role that would change the whole temperature of her career. She had gotten a shot at superstardom with her first leading role in 2006's All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, the feature directorial debut of 50/50 and The Night Before helmer Jonathan Levine. Unfortunately for her, a distribution deal kept the film from being released in the US until 2013, and the breakout didn't happen.
Luckily, Amber got another shot at the proverbial brass ring just two years later with The Informers. Based on the short story collection of the same name by American Psycho and Less Than Zero scribe Bret Easton Ellis, the film was a sprawling web of interconnected characters in and around the various entertainment industries of Southern California. It was a star-studded affair with Billy Bob Thornton, Kim Basinger, Winona Ryder, Mickey Rourke, and the late Brad Renfro—in his final role—all bringing substantial heat to the project.
Heard's role wasn't a leading role, but it was the kind of flashy part that could easily make her the breakout star of the whole affair. Thornton's character in the film is a successful film producer whose son Graham (Jon Foster) is your prototypical rich kid drug dealer. Heard plays Graham's girlfriend Christie, who is sleeping with several other people, including Graham's bisexual best friend Martin (Austin Nichols). Graham and Martin are also involved in a sexual relationship, which makes the transition to throuple for Christie and the boys that much easier. By 25 minutes in, their first threesome has commenced...
Ten minutes later, they're on to foursomes with Valentina Garcia and anyone who knows Ellis' work can pretty much see where this is heading, and no, I'm not referring to them adding a sexual partner every ten minutes of screen time. As any avid reader of this site who saw the film can attest, Heard became a skin legend then and there. No longer would Amber fade into the background, now she was an actress to keep both eyes on at all times. Unfortunately, the world is not made up of avid readers of this site and the rest of the world greeted the entire endeavor with a shrug.
By and large, critics didn't like the film and audiences were completely apathetic toward its existence even after making its way to home video. The film has no cult following or cultural footprint to speak of and it probably baffles Amber Heard fans the world over. Some stories just work better on the page than they do on film, but since our imaginations couldn't dare to compete with Heard's actual body, this is one of those times where it's probably best to just stick to the good parts here at Mr. Skin.
And none of this is to denigrate her nude scenes prior to The Informers, but her nude scene in Friday Night Lights is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it deal, while in Alpha Dog she's gotta compete for our attention with a similarly nude Amanda Seyfried. The Informers' unique combination of a sexually combustible character and a lot of screen time spent in the nude just forever burned Amber's image into our brains. While she's certainly a much more divisive figure in the general public than she was 13 years ago when she did these nude scenes, there's no denying that a substantial portion of skin fans will never break bad on Amber.
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Catch up with our most recent editions of Anatomy of a Nude Scene
—Shari Solanis' Skinsational Real Sex Scenes in Now and Later
—Busty Beauty Pam Grier Becomes a Blaxploitation Icon in 1973's Coffy
—Christina Ricci Goes Nude for the First Time in the Opening Minutes of Prozac Nation
—A Salute to Tanya Roberts' PG Nudity in Sheena and The Beastmaster
—Sarah Silverman is Seriously Sexy (and Topless) in I Smile Back
—Jessica Chastain's Nude Debut in Salomé Takes Director Al Pacino Over a Decade to Finish
—Salma Hayek Knocks Our Pants Off with Her Performance in Frida
—Kirsten Dunst Goes Topless for the First Time in All Good Things
—Kristen Stewart Pops Her Top Off in On the Road
—Uma Thurman Steals Dangerous Liaisons Out From Under Her More Famous Co-Stars
—Did They Really Kill a Chicken During That Infamous Pink Flamingos Sex Scene?
—A Naked Julie Michaels Kicks Keanu's Ass in Point Break
—Alexis Dziena Gives Aging Lothario Bill Murray an Eyeful in Broken Flowers
—P.J. Soles Establishes a Key Horror Movie Trope in John Carpenter's Halloween
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Click Here to Read All Past Editions of Anatomy of a Nude Scene/Anatomy of a Scene's Anatomy
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