LOS ANGELES — Amber Heard says she has become a mom and did it “on her own terms,” as a single parent.
In an Instagram post, the actor said she welcomed daughter Oonagh Paige Heard on April 8. A photo of Heard with the baby nestled against her accompanied Thursday’s announcement.
“I now appreciate how radical it is for us as women to think about one of the most fundamental parts of our destinies in this way,” Heard said in the post. “I hope we arrive at a point in which it’s normalized to not want a ring in order to have a crib.”
She wrote that “a part of me wants to uphold that my private life is none of anyone’s business,” but added the nature of her job “compels me to take control of this” by revealing the birth.
“She’s the beginning of the rest of my life,” Heard said.
The actor has faced a tumultuous period of her life, with her 2015 to 2017 marriage to Johnny Depp involving a spate of legal actions.
Last year, Depp lost a libel case against a British newspaper that accused him of domestic violence, with a judge ruling the allegations were “substantially correct.” In March, a British court refused Depp permission to appeal the ruling that he assaulted Heard, saying his attempt to overturn the decision had “no real prospect of success.”
Depp also is suing Heard for $50 million in Virginia over a Washington Post op-ed essay that she wrote about domestic violence. The trial in that case was recently delayed until April 2022.