The Moment

Amber Heard just did the celebrity equivalent of a UFO sighting: she quietly let the internet glimpse her 4-year-old daughter, Oonagh, and then just as quickly pulled the curtain back.

In a Thanksgiving Instagram carousel, the 38-year-old “Aquaman” actress posted a series of cozy holiday shots from over the years, writing, “Thanksgiving cheers over the years” and calling it “a look back at all the full hearts and plates” she’s shared. She wrapped it with, “Hoping you are well topped up on both this year,” according to coverage of the post from November 2025.

Buried in the sixth slide: little Oonagh, seated at the head of the table in a bib, while Amber fusses with the tablescape like a Pinterest board in human form. No face-forward glam shot, no close-up, no endless kid content. Just one quick frame, then back to turkey and family vibes.

Amber Heard serving Thanksgiving dinner with a baby in a high chair in the background.
Photo: amberheard/Instagram

Her twins, Agnes and Ocean – the babies she announced in May 2025 – were nowhere in sight. Instead, Amber shared more shots cooking with her dad and lingering over food and wine. Very “my life is full” energy, very controlled access.

Amber Heard slicing an apple while a man stands beside her, with two glasses of red wine on the table.
Photo: Amber Heard/Instagram

The Take

What we’re watching here isn’t just cute Thanksgiving content. It’s a full-on rebrand strategy.

Amber’s not the first celebrity to go from tabloid tornado to soft-focus family album, but the way she’s doing it is textbook 2025. After years of headlines dominated by that brutal defamation trial with ex-husband Johnny Depp, she’s gone quiet, moved to Spain, expanded her family, and now only lets the world see what she can crop, filter, and caption herself.

The Thanksgiving post is basically a mission statement: “My life is about my kids and my kitchen now – but you only get a curated taste.” It’s like she’s inviting the public over for dinner, then keeping us politely stuck in the foyer.

And honestly? I don’t blame her. Celebrity parents have two options in the age of social media: overshare their kids for clicks, or play the long game with micro-access. Amber’s chosen micro-access – one baby at the table, fully clothed, no close-up, surrounded by food and family. No names in the caption, no tagging the kids, no splashy new-photos-of-the-twins rollout.

If Kim Kardashian is running the internet’s mommy vlog channel, Amber’s in the witness protection version of “Barefoot Contessa.” Same warm kitchen, wildly different guest list.

There’s also a subtle flex here. By sharing old Thanksgiving snaps and that Mother’s Day 2025 quote about finally completing the family she’s “strived to build for years,” she’s rewriting the narrative. The story is no longer “Amber Heard, courtroom lightning rod.” It’s “Amber Heard, single mom who moved across the ocean, had kids via surrogate, and built the life she wanted anyway.” The men in her history – Depp, Elon Musk, the other exes – are now footnotes. The feed is kids, food, Spain, work.

Is it image control? Absolutely. But it’s also a woman who’s been dragged across the internet deciding that if she’s going to be looked at, she’ll decide how.

Receipts

Confirmed:

  • Amber Heard shared a Thanksgiving-themed Instagram carousel in November 2025 that included a rare shot of daughter Oonagh sitting at the head of a holiday table, with Amber standing beside her. This was described and screengrabbed in entertainment coverage dated November 28, 2025.
  • Her caption included lines about “Thanksgiving cheers over the years,” looking back at “full hearts and plates,” and hoping followers were “well topped up on both” that year, as quoted from that coverage.
  • Heard welcomed daughter Oonagh via surrogate in April 2021 and wrote publicly at the time that she wanted to do parenthood “on [her] own terms” and called the baby “the beginning of the rest of [her] life.” Those quotes come directly from her 2021 Instagram announcement, widely reported by multiple outlets.
  • She announced the birth of twins Agnes and Ocean in a Mother’s Day 2025 Instagram post, saying she was “elated beyond words” to celebrate the completion of the family she’d “strived to build for years,” as reported in May 2025 entertainment pieces that cited the original post.
  • Heard has been living in Spain since after the 2022 U.S. defamation trial involving Johnny Depp, a move she has acknowledged in interviews and public appearances there.

Unverified / Not Shown:

  • How often Oonagh or the twins appear in Amber’s offline daily life is unknown; we only see what she chooses to post.
  • Any assumptions about who, if anyone, is co-parenting beyond what Amber has publicly shared would be speculation and are not confirmed.

Backstory (For Casual Readers)

If you checked out of Hollywood gossip around 2018, here’s the quick catch-up. Amber Heard, an actress best known for “Aquaman” and indie films, was married to Johnny Depp from 2015 to 2017. Their relationship and split turned into years of legal battles, ending in a 2022 U.S. defamation trial that dominated headlines and social media.

Amid all that, Amber became a mom via surrogate in April 2021, announcing daughter Oonagh with a post about wanting to be a parent on her own terms. In 2024, she briefly showed Oonagh’s face in a post reflecting on filming “Aquaman 2.” Then, in May 2025, she revealed she had welcomed twins, Agnes and Ocean, and called that Mother’s Day unforgettable and her family “complete.” Around the same time, she largely relocated to Spain, shifted out of constant Hollywood visibility, and dialed her social media down to occasional glimpses of work, food, and family.

What’s Next

Don’t expect Amber to suddenly turn into a mommy influencer. If anything, the Thanksgiving carousel suggests the opposite: she’s settling into a very slow drip of personal content. One kid photo here, a cooking-with-dad shot there, and long stretches of offline life in between.

What to watch for:

  • Future holiday posts: Does she keep the kids to the background, or does she slowly normalize seeing more of them as they grow?
  • New projects: Any next acting role or creative project will land differently now that she’s framed herself as a devoted mother living abroad.
  • Public narrative shifts: As time passes from the Depp trial, her family posts may become the dominant story casual fans remember – not the legal war.

For now, she’s sending us one clear message from that Thanksgiving table: my life might be public, but my kids are not. And in 2025, that might be the most radical celebrity move of all.

Your turn: Do you think celebs like Amber should share occasional, tightly controlled glimpses of their kids, or keep them completely off social media altogether?