Amber Heard pictured as a teenager at the time Johnny Depp was already a star

Pictures of Amber Heard have emerged showing The Rum Diary star when she was a fresh-faced teenager, right at the time her rumored beau Johnny Depp had established himself as one of Hollywood’s leading men.

And even as a teenager in Austin, Texas, Amber Heard, 26, had the million dollar features that would make her one of Hollywood’s hottest young starlets.

Of course one striking difference is her hair color, which was a mousy blonde rather than the platinum locks she is now famous for.

Amber Heard was also a cheeky girl who loved sticking her tongue out and making faces for her friends.

This is highlighted in some images taken when she went to a friend’s swimming pool party when she was 15, as she loved hamming it up for the cameras.

Opening his heart about his bisexual Playboy Club star daughter, 62-year-old David Heard did not want to speak about Johnny Depp rumors, saying: “I do not have any comment about anything like that.”

However David Heard did say he is pleased at how well she has done for herself, adding: “I’m proud of her. She’s hard-working, steadfast to her job and doesn’t do anything but go to auditions and meetings.

“She hardly does anything else, she wanted this for her career since she was 12-years-old, from the time she was a little girl.”

As he revealed Amber was always determined to become a star.

Like Johnny Depp, she was a high-school dropout that left $12,000-a-year private Catholic school St Michaelís Academy at the age of 16 to pursue a career in front of the camera.

David Heard said: “She did modeling first and went to New York. She came home because I begged her.

“But I couldn’t stop her when she was 18. I begged her not to go but she knew what she was doing, and she was right. She’s a very talented actress.”

David Heard lives with his wife Paige in the outskirts of Austin in the same modest detached home to which they moved when was Amber was around nine.

He still runs his own building contracting business but hopes to soon retire.

And while he said he is proud of his daughter’s Texan roots, she rarely returns now.

David Heard said: “She was born in Austin and raised in Austin. Now she only comes back when she has to.

“She was raised here but she loves travelling the country and the world. She was in China last week.”

David Heard does get to go to LA and visit his daughter “a couple of times a year, to events like the SAG Awards and premieres, I’m usually her date”.

But now it seems he may now have superstar competition to fight off for his daughter’s hand now.

Meanwhile one of her childhood friends said that while Amber Heard was always ambitious, she was a shy girl who ended up being given a less than flattering nickname due to her looks.

Her classmate Meghan Brindley said: “She had a nickname because she was pretty. Some people used to call her <<Amber seen and not Heard>>.

“She also once mixed up the term feminism in theology and so people made fun of her for that, she said something like <<I’m against women’s suffrage>>, it was like uh-oh.

“So just silly little things like that. You know we’ve all made innocent mistakes like that.

“She was very quiet, she always seemed almost like her mind was just off somewhere else and she always said <<I’m going to go and be an actress and that is what I want to do>>.”