Musk’s brother Kimbal and the entrepreneur’s friends hated the Aquaman star ‘with a passion’ because she brought so much drama into his life during their year-long relationship.
According to Musk’s senior staff, Heard was ‘like the Joker in Batman’ who ‘thrives on destabilizing everything.’
Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk, titled ‘Elon Musk’, describes the relationship as a ‘dark vortex’ that was the most painful relationship the Tesla founder has ever been in.
‘It was brutal,’ Musk says of his time with Heard, adding that the breakup led to the ‘most concentrated period of pain’ he had ever endured.
‘Elon Musk’, which is out Tuesday, sheds new light on Heard, 37, whose stormy marriage to Johnny Depp led to a televised civil trial in Virginia and ended with a jury awarding him $15 million in damages for defamation.
In the book Isaacson writes that Musk, 52, who has 11 children by three different women, was ‘not bred for domestic tranquility.’
The book says: ‘Most of his relationships involve psychological turmoil.
‘The most agonizing of them all was with the actress Amber Heard who drew him into a dark vortex that lasted more than a year and produced deep-seated pain that lingers to this day.
‘It was brutal’, the author writes.
Their affair started after she made the movie Machete Kills in 2012 and he agreed to be a consultant. The film was about an inventor who wants to create a society on an orbiting space station.
Heard says in the book: ‘I guess I could be called a geek for someone who can also be called a hot chick,’ she jokes. Musk took her for a Tesla ride and Heard ‘decided he looked attractive for a rocket engineer.’
Their next meeting was in line for the Met Gala in New York May 2016. Heard was about to divorce Depp and found Musk was a ‘breath of fresh air’.
A few weeks later Musk came to visit Heard in Miami, where she was working. He flew her up to Cape Canaveral where a Falcon 9 launch was scheduled.
Heard ‘thought it was the most interesting date she had been on’, the book claims.
For Musk’s birthday that June, she gave him a surprise visit to the Tesla factory in California by flying in from Italy where she was working.
Heard ‘hid in the back of a Tesla and popped out’ when Musk came by.
Their relationship ‘deepened’ in 2017 when he flew to see her in Australia while she was filming Aquaman. Musk told her she reminded him of Mercy, his favorite character in the video game Overwatch.
According to the book, Heard spent two months designing a costume of the character so she could ‘role play for him.’
The book says: ‘Her playfulness, however, was accompanied by the type of turmoil that attracted Musk.
‘His brother and friends hated her with a passion that made their distaste for Justine (Musk’s first wife) pale.
‘She was just so toxic’, Kimbal says. ‘A nightmare’. Musk’s chief of staff Sam Teller compares her to a comic-book villain.
‘She was like the Joker in Batman’, he says. She didn’t have a goal or aim other than chaos. She thrives on destabilizing everything.’
She and Musk would stay up all night fighting and then he would not be able to get up until the afternoon.’
They broke up in July 2017 but got back together for another five ‘tumultuous months.’
The end finally came after a ‘wild’ trip to Rio de Janeiro in December 2017 with Kimbal, his wife and some of the kids.
The book says: ‘When they got to the hotel, Elon and Amber had another of their flamethrower fights.
‘She locked herself in the room and started yelling she was afraid she would be attacked and that Elon had taken her passport.’
Kimbal and Musk’s security team tried to reassure Heard and that she could ‘leave whenever she wanted’.
Kimbal said: ‘She really is a very good actress so she will say things that you’re like: ”Wow, maybe she’s telling you the truth”, but she isn’t. The way she can create her own reality reminds me of my dad.’
In the book, Amber admits they had an argument and that ‘she got rather dramatic’ but claims it was resolved that evening, which happened to be New Year’s Eve.
Heard showed Isaacson videos and photos from that night which showed her and Musk: Musk wishes her a happy new year and kisses her ‘passionately’ on the lips.
The book says: ‘She (Heard) came to the conclusion that Musk cultivated drama because he needed a lot of stimuli to keep him invigorated.
‘Even after they broke up for good, the embers endured. “I love him very much,” she says. She also understands him well.
‘”Elon loves fire, and sometimes it burns him,” she says.’
After the breakup, the summer of 2017 until the fall of 2018 was the ‘most hellacious period of his life’, Isaacson writes of Musk.
Musk says: ‘That was the time of the most concentrated pain I’ve ever had. 18 months of unrelenting insanity. It was mind bogglingly painful.’
During meetings with investors Musk would appear in a ‘comatose’ state and repeatedly asked to be alone in a room with the lights off.
But Kimbal had a different view and was relieved that Heard was no longer around.
He says in the book that it’s ‘really sad’ that his brother ‘falls in love with these people who are really mean to him.’ He said: ‘They’re beautiful, no question, but they have a very dark side and Elon knows that they’re toxic.’
Isaacson writes that Grimes, the singer who is mother to three of Musk’s children, was a ‘good partner’ for him unlike Heard because her ‘chaos was undergirded by kindness and even sweetness.’
Grimes says: ‘My Dungeons and Dragons alignment would probably be chaotic good, whereas Amber’s is probably chaotic evil. He’s attracted to chaotic evil.
‘It’s about his father and what he grew up with and he’s quick to fall back into being treated badly. He associates love with being mean or abusive. There’s an Errol-Amber through line.’