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Amber Heard Has Emergency Medical Issue During Awards Ceremony: What Happened?

By Aaron Homer
Published on: 07:37 PST, Apr 9, 2017

Amber Heard had some sort of medical emergency during an awards gala Friday night, causing the guest of honor to have to leave before she could be given her award and leaving her friends Tillett Wright and Cara Delevingne to accept on her behalf, Entertainment Tonight is reporting. So far, it’s not clear what happened.

Heard, 30, was at the Unite4:Humanity gala at the Beverly Wilshire Four Seasons Hotel on Friday night, where she was to accept an award for her work with the American Civil Liberties Union. Specifically, the ex-wife of Johnny Depp has agreed to donate $7 million to the ACLU to help stop violence against women and support Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. ET notes that Heard is apparently flush with money now that she’s divorced from Depp.

Unfortunately, she suffered some sort of medical emergency before she was given the award, and her friends accepted on her behalf. Cara Delevigne explained to the audience why she was accepting the award in Amber’s place.

“Our dear friend Amber unfortunately suffered a bit of an emergency earlier this evening and she had to go.”

She then made it clear that this was serious.

“I’ve never seen Amber nervous and I’ve known her quite intimately for a long time. She’s met pretty much everyone that you could be starstruck by. But Ayaan Hirsi Ali is as close to God as you could get for her, so to know that Ayaan was here and for her to have to leave means that it was a very serious emergency.”

So what was the emergency? As of this writing, it’s not clear, as neither Amber nor anyone affiliated with her has spoken publicly and on-the-record about it. It’s also unclear whether or not Amber went to the hospital. However, she’s apparently on the mend. TMZ, citing unnamed sources, says that she’s “better” and “resting at home.”

A likely possibility is that Amber simply came down with the old bugaboo that plagues celebrities from time to time: exhaustion. While “exhaustion” has been used as an excuse by celebrities to hide drug problems or mental illness, it’s also a very real problem in the entertainment industry. Celebrities work grueling schedules, including 16 hour days on-set. When they’re not on TV or movie sets, they’re often traveling – making personal appearances, hitting the talk shows, and so on. This necessitates lots of travel, often times being on different continents and working in different time zones; this, of course, leads to dehydration, poor nutrition and bathroom habits, lack of exercise, and so on, and can wreak havoc on a person’s mind and body.

Meanwhile, E! News reports that Amber, her sister Whitney, and “a few other people” appeared to be “distressed and uncomfortable.”

Otherwise, there’s not much to go on. Amber is not known to have any health problems or substance abuse issues, so a chronic illness and/or a drug issue seem unlikely at this time. Maybe she just got the flu.

In a statement, Unite4:Humanity wished Amber a speedy recovery.

“Amber Heard had to leave early due to an emergency. Her friends Cara Delevingne and iO Tillett Wright graciously accepted the award on her behalf. We know Amber would have loved to stay through the show and hope she is doing well.”

[Featured Image by Mike Coppola/Getty Images]

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