Amber Heard recalls coming out to her religious parents

Amber Heard has recalled how difficult it was to tell her religious parents that she was bisexual.

While the 32-year-old actress had always been loud and proud of her sexuality since coming out publicly in 2010, she had to be gentle when breaking the news to her mum and dad, Patricia and David Heard. But tiptoeing around the issue didn’t make the outcome any better.

"I am from Austin, Texas. My dad is out of central casting Texan. Good Southern man, and I was raised in a religious home," Heard said during a panel conversation at the recent South by Southwest film festival. "And being an outspoken lesbian, atheist, vegetarian, I remember when I told them about my relationship, that I was in love with this woman, and at the beginning of that it was just tears, tears.

"They didn't know how to process it because, for them, it was being thrown into a binary system of processing it, negative or positive," she added.

But Heard said that as time went on her parents' attitudes towards her sexuality changed for the better.

"Five years later, I was getting an award, and I asked my parents to drive out to Dallas," she recalled at the conference. "And I see them sitting front and center and here I am getting this 'gay' award… My parents in five years, look at the journey. Attitudes and hearts can change."

Before Heard married actor Johnny Depp in 2015 -- they divorced 18 months later -- she dated 42-year-old photographer Tasya van Ree for four years before their 2012 split.