Amber Heard sued for $10m over refusal to do nude scenes in London Fields

Amber Heard is being sued by the makers of her new movie ‘London Fields’ for $10 million, alleging that she reneged on contractual agreements and refused to do nude scenes.

Heard is playing the character of Nicola Six in the adaptation of Martin Amis’s revered novel, but according to legal papers obtained by The Wrap, she’s being taken to court over failure to comply ‘with commitment to act in scenes requiring nudity, in contravention of her contractual obligations’.

She’s also being sued for failing to take part in the movie’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, which was later pulled from the schedule, despite contractual clauses which require her to take part in publicising the film.

It’s said that Heard, the ex-wife of Johnny Depp, who also appears in the film, was fully aware of that the movie was ‘salacious, provocative and contained nude scenes’ when she signed up.

But because she later refused to film the nudity, ‘key scenes in the script had to be removed and/or rewritten to accommodate Heard’s behavior’.

Nicola Six Ltd, the producers of the film, are also accusing Heard of sabotaging the film’s Toronto premiere, and that she ‘actively encouraged TIFF to pull the Picture from the festival at the 11th hour (which TIFF did), thereby creating a maelstrom of poor publicity and word-of-mouth and damaging, perhaps irreparably, the Picture’s reputation and salability’.

The document continued that ‘Consistent with industry norms, Plaintiff (like TIFF) expected Heard (the film’s star) to attend TIFF and support the Picture, as Heard was contractually required to do — and as she had been paid to do’ and ‘the refusal to do so was especially glaring, and harmful, in view of the fact that she was present at TIFF to promote another film, ‘The Danish Girl’, in which she had a far smaller role, and to support her then-husband Johnny Depp’s film, ‘Black Mass’.

Meanwhile, the film’s director Mathew Cullen is counter-suing Nicola Six Ltd for fraud, claiming that the producers hijacked the final cut of the movie.

The adaptation of Amis’s book, published in 1989, has been long-in-gestation, with David Cronenberg planning to make it as long ago as 2001, and directors like Michael Winterbottom and David Mackenzie also previously in the frame.

This iteration stars Heard alongside Billy Bob Thornton, Jim Sturgess, Jason Isaacs, Cara Delevingne, and Theo James.

But it’s not gone down at all well with critics, The Independent’s Kaleem Aftab calling it ‘car-crash filmmaking’.

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