Amber Heard passed up NBC's 'Friday Night Lights' for CW drama

[MickBeth]

The role called for an "ethnic girl with urban appeal," but blond, blue-eyed, fair-skinned Amber Heard auditioned anyway.

"I just loved the writing so much that I was determined to get the part," says Austinite Heard by phone from Los Angeles. "I had about 10 auditions — well, not 10, but it was a lot."

Persistence paid off, and Heard, 21, landed the role of mysterious, sexy Greta on the CW's summer teen drama "Hidden Palms." In the pilot, Greta dances through a golf-course sprinkler in a sheer white nightie. It's a memorable scene, to say the least.

The series, created by Kevin Williamson ("Dawson's Creek," "Scream"), is about a high-school guy who witnesses his father's suicide, falls into drug use, survives rehab and moves to Palm Springs with his mother and her new husband. Everybody in the new neighborhood harbors dark secrets. The cast includes Gail O'Grady, D.W. Moffett and Sharon Lawrence.

"Hidden Palms," all eight episodes of it, were filmed in Phoenix last spring.

"It was eye-opening how much work goes into something like this," Heard says. "It was a lot of work."

Born and raised in Austin, Heard dropped out of St. Michael's Catholic Academy at the age of 17, not long after losing her best friend (whom she declines to name) in a fatal car crash.

"I went to New York to start modeling, but that didn't work out so I went to Los Angeles to get into acting," Heard says.

Movie credits include "North Country," "Alpha Dog" and, coming this fall, "All the Boys Love Mandy Lane," which screened at South by Southwest film festival. She scored a small role in the 2004 movie version of "Friday Night Lights" but wasn't interested in the NBC series because "Hidden Palms" had already come along.

Heard will be seen as Seth Grogen's girlfriend in Judd Apatow's 2008 comedy "Pineapple Express," and she starts filming another teen drama, "Get Some," next month.

Her parents — father David, a contractor, and mother Paige, an Internet researcher for the state — still live in Austin. Amber's younger sister Whitney lives with her in Hollywood.

"Hidden Palms" only arrived last Wednesday, so reaction and ratings are not fully known. But Heard's Austin circle of support is on board.

"All my friends and family are tuning in, and they seem to really love it," Heard says. "That means a lot to me."

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