Amber Heard secretly welcomes baby girl: 'I wanted to have a child on my own terms'

Amber Heard has revealed she welcomed a child in secret in April.

The 35-year-old actress took to Twitter to announce she is now the proud mother of a baby girl named Oonagh Paige Heard, after she welcomed the tot into the world on April 8.

Alongside a professionally shot picture of herself holding her baby, Amber wrote: "I'm so excited to share this news with you. Four years ago, I decided I wanted to have a child. I wanted to do it on my own terms. I now appreciate how radical it is for us as women to think about one of the most fundamental parts of our destinies in this way.

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"I hope we arrive at a point in which it's normalised to not want a ring in order to have a crib. A part of me wants to uphold that my private life is none of anyone's business. I also get that the nature of my job compels me to take control of this.

"My daughter was born on April 8, 2021. Her name is Oonagh Paige Heard. She's the beginning of the rest of my life."

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The Aquaman actress has not shared any further details about her daughter's birth, but it seems the tot gets her middle name, Paige, from Amber's own mother Paige Parsons, who died in May last year.

Speaking about the news at the time, Amber said: "I am heartbroken and devastated beyond belief at the loss of my mom, Paige Heard. She left us too early, clasping onto the memory of her beautiful, gentle soul. She will be missed from the very depths of our hearts forever. Her unflinching, open heart made her the most beautiful woman I had ever known.

"It's hard to imagine and even more difficult to say but I feel truly lucky to have been her daughter and been given the gift of having the light she shone on everyone, fall on me for nearly 34 years.

"This has been an unbelievably painful time but in that, I am reminded of what survives us all, love.

"The kindness, support and generosity my sister Whit and I have received from friends and family has been utterly soul-saving."

It comes after her ex-husband Johnny Depp lost a British libel claim against the Sun last year, with a High Court judge finding an article which called him a "wife-beater" to be "substantially true".

At the time the ruling was handed down, Heard posted the following statement to Instagram: "We are pleased — but by no means surprised — by the Court's denial of Mr. Depp's application for appeal. The evidence presented in the UK case was overwhelming and undeniable. To reiterate, the original verdict was that Mr. Depp committed domestic violence against Amber on no fewer than 12 occasions and she was left in fear of her life."

Depp was married to Heard from 2015-2017. He continues to deny the allegations and claims that Heard was the actual perpetrator of the abuse.

- Additional reporting, NZ Herald