Amber Heard fails to show in Australian court to face charges over bringing dogs in illegally

An Australian magistrate has ordered the actress to appear in court in November

Johnny Depp and Amber Heard pictured in Santa Monica, California in January, 2015 (Getty Images)

Amber Heard failed to show at a court hearing in Australia, where the actress faces charges for allegedly smuggling the two dogs she shares with Johnny Depp into the country.

Heard was charged with two counts of illegally importing Pistol and Boo and one count of producing a false document after the Yorkshire Terriers were brought into the country earlier this year. It is understood that they arrived in her husband Depp’s jet while he was filming the latest instalment of Pirates of the Caribbean.

She did not appear at the Southport Magistrates Court in Queensland state on Monday, and Heard was ordered to appear on 2 November when the case will return to court, according to the Associated Press. Heard attended the Venice Film Festival this weekend and was not expected to show in court.

Australian authorities were only alerted to the presence of the dogs when a picture of them at a grooming parlour was posted online. The Minister for Agriculture, Barnaby Joyce, drew more attention to the case when he launched a scathing attack on Depp for bringing them to Australia, where strict quarantine laws are in place to prevent diseases from spreading.

"If we start letting movie stars — even though they've been the sexiest man alive twice — to come into our nation (with pets), then why don't we just break the laws for everybody?" he told a press conference at the time. ”It's time that Pistol and Boo buggered off back to the United States."

Depp has not been charged over the incident, but he did take an apparent swipe at Mr Joyce at the film festival this weekend, where he told reporters: "I killed my dogs and ate them under direct orders from some kind of, I don't know, sweaty, big-gutted man from Australia.”