Amber Marshall Reflects on Her Long-Running Heartland Role

Most actors leave their characters behind when filming wraps.

Amber Marshall has never really had that luxury—not that she’d want it anyway.

She has played Amy Fleming on Heartland since 2007. But off-screen, her life is almost identical to her character’s. She lives on a 100-acre ranch right outside High River, Alberta, surrounded by her own horses and dealing with many of the exact same daily chores that keep Amy busy on TV.

Over the years, it’s getting harder to tell where Amy ends and Amber Marshall begins.

“Amy’s had a pretty tough life,” Amber once shared. “She lost her mom in the very first episode. That kind of grief doesn’t just disappear. It shapes who you become.”

Unlike many TV characters who stay frozen in time, Amy has been allowed to actually grow up. She has dealt with marriage, motherhood, devastating loss, and heartbreak. And through it all, Amber has been living a parallel country life.

The Reset Button

When a long day of filming wraps, Amber doesn’t head back to a quiet city apartment. Instead, she goes home to clean stalls and feed animals.

“Doing chores is my reset button,” she says. “Feed the animals, walk the property, breathe. It helps me decompress.”

Her personal herd includes her horses—Hawk, Nitro, Cinch, and Cruz—plus her miniature horses, Talon and Screech, who love to run around and boss the bigger animals.

Keeping Heartland Honest

Marshall’s role on Heartland goes beyond acting.

Her real-life horse expertise also makes Heartland a better, more authentic show. On top of acting, she serves as a consulting producer to make sure the horse training scenes actually look real.

“The writers are great, but they’re city people,” she laughs. “Sometimes I have to look at a script and say, ‘That’s not safe,’ or ‘No real trainer would ever do that.'”

She is constantly learning new training techniques in her own time, too. Years ago, horse trainer Nikki Flundra introduced her to “liberty work”—training horses with no ropes or halters—which Amber quickly brought home to her own animals.

Occasionally, her real animals even find their way onto the television screen. Talon once played a rescue horse on the show, though Amber joked that making him look neglected was almost impossible because he was way too well-fed.

One Storyline She Never Forgot

When asked about the most challenging storyline she’s ever had to shoot, Amber pointed to a season where Amy temporarily lost her eyesight.

“Portraying that fear—thinking she might never see again—was intense,” she recalled. “Horses are everything to Amy. Losing that connection, even for a moment, was terrifying.”

Amy Grew Up Too

One reason that keeps Amber excited to play Amy year after year is the fact that the show lets her evolve.

“They’ve let Amy change,” she said. “She’s matured, made mistakes, and kept learning. That’s so rare on TV.”

After all this time, she still isn’t tired of the ranch life, either on or off the screen. “There’s always something new with Amy,” Amber says. “She’s not done yet.”