Adams began her career as a dancer in a dinner theater, which she pursued from 1994 to 1998, and made her film debut with a supporting part in the dark comedy Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999). She made guest appearances on television and took "mean girl" parts in low-budget feature films. Her first major role was in Steven Spielberg's biopic Catch Me If You Can (2002), but she was unemployed for a year afterward.
Her breakthrough came when she played a loquacious pregnant woman in the independent comedy-drama Junebug (2005), for which she received her first Academy Award nomination.
The musical fantasy film Enchanted (2007), in which Adams played cheerful princess-to-be Giselle, was her first success in a leading role. She followed it by playing other naรฏve, optimistic women in films like the drama Doubt (2008) and Sunshine Cleaning (2008) and subsequently played more assertive parts to positive reviews in the sports film The Fighter (2010) and the psychological drama The Master (2012).
From 2013 to 2017, she portrayed Lois Lane in superhero films set in the DC Extended Universe. She won two consecutive Golden Globes for Best Actress for playing a seductive con artist in the crime film American Hustle (2013) and painter Margaret Keane in the biopic Big Eyes (2014). Further acclaim came for playing a linguist in the science fiction film Arrival (2016), a self-harming reporter in the HBO miniseries Sharp Objects (2018), and Lynne Cheney in the satire Vice (2018).
On stage, Adams starred in a Public Theater revival of Into the Woods in 2012 and a West End revival of The Glass Menagerie in 2022. In 2014, she was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time, and featured in the Forbes Celebrity 100 list.
Early life
Amy Lou Adams was born on August 20, 1974, in Aviano, Friuli, Italy, to American parents Kathryn and Richard Adams, while her father served in the United States Army at the local air base. She is the middle child of seven, with four brothers and two sisters. After moving from one army base to another, the family settled in Castle Rock, Colorado when she was eight. After leaving the Army, her father sang professionally in nightclubs and restaurants.
Adams says that going to her father's shows and drinking Shirley Temples at a bar are among her fondest childhood memories. The family was poor; they camped, hiked together, and performed amateur skits written by her father or sometimes by her mother. She was enthusiastic about being in the plays and always played the lead.
Adams grew up Mormon until her parents divorced in 1985 and left the church. She did not have strong religious beliefs, but said that she values her upbringing for teaching her love and compassion. After the breakup, her father moved to Arizona and remarried, while the children remained with their mother. Her mother became a semi-professional bodybuilder who took the children with her to the gym when she trained.
Adams has compared her uninhibited early years with her siblings to Lord of the Flies. She said that she was a "scrappy, tough kid" and fought frequently with other children.
Adams attended Douglas County High School in Castle Rock. She was not academically inclined, but was interested in the creative arts and sang in the school choir. She competed in track and gymnastics, harbored ambitions of becoming a ballerina, and trained as an apprentice at the local David Taylor Dance Company. She disliked high school keeping mostly to herself.
After graduation she and her mother moved to Atlanta. She did not go to college, to her parents' disappointment and she later regretted not pursuing higher education. At 18, she realized she was not gifted enough to be a professional ballerina, and found musical theater to be more to her taste. One of her first stage roles was in a community theater production of Annie, which she did as a volunteer.
Supporting herself, she worked as a greeter at a GAP store and as a waitress at Hooters, but left the job when she saved enough money to buy a used car.
Career
1994โ2004: Dinner theater and early screen appearances
Adams began her professional career as a dancer in a 1994 dinner theater production of A Chorus Line in Boulder, Colorado. The job required her to wait on tables before getting up on stage to perform. She enjoyed singing and dancing, but disliked waitressing and ran into trouble when a fellow dancer, whom she considered a friend, made false accusations about her to the director.
Adams said, "I never really knew what the lies were. I only knew I kept getting called in and lectured about my lack of professionalism." She lost the job but went on to perform in dinner theater at Denver's Heritage Square Music Hall and Country Dinner Playhouse. During a performance of Anything Goes at the Country Dinner Playhouse in 1995, she was spotted by Michael Brindisi, the president and artistic director of the Chanhassen, Minnesota-based Chanhassen Dinner Theatres, who offered her a job there.
Adams moved to Chanhassen, where she performed in the theater for the next three years. She loved the "security and schedule" of the job, and has said that she learned tremendously from it. Nonetheless, the grueling work took its toll on her: "I had a lot of recurring injuriesโbursitis in my knees, pulled muscles in my groin, my adductor and abductor. My body was wearing out."
During her time at Chanhassen, Adams acted in her first filmโa black-and-white short satire named The Chromium Hook. Soon after, while she was off work nursing a pulled muscle, she attended the locally held auditions for the Hollywood film Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999), a satire on beauty pageants starring Kirsten Dunst, Ellen Barkin, and Kirstie Alley.
Adams was cast in the supporting part of a promiscuous cheerleader. She felt that her character's personality was far removed from her own and worried about how people would perceive her. The production was filmed locally, which enabled Adams to shoot for her role while also performing Brigadoon on stage. Encouragement from Alley prompted Adams to actively pursue a film career, and she moved to Los Angeles in January 1999.
She described her initial experience in the city as "dark" and "bleak", and she pined for her life back in Chanhassen.
In Los Angeles, Adams auditioned for whatever parts came her way, but she was mostly given roles of "the bitchy girl". Her first assignment came within a week of her relocation in the Fox television series Manchester Prep, a spin-off of the film Cruel Intentions, in the lead role of Kathryn Merteuil (played by Sarah Michelle Gellar in the film).
After numerous script revisions and two production shutdowns, the series was canceled. Adams later said a controversial scene in which her character encourages a girl to masturbate on a horse was the primary reason for its cancellation. The three filmed episodes were re-edited and released later in 2000 as the direct-to-video film Cruel Intentions 2.
Despite a negative critical reception, Nathan Rabin of The A.V. Club wrote that Adams played her "alpha-bitch role with vicious glee largely missing from Sarah Michelle Gellar's sterile take on the character".
Adams next had a supporting role as the teenage nemesis of a movie star (played by Kimberly Davies) in Psycho Beach Party (2000), a horror parody of beach party and slasher films. She played the part as a homage to actress Ann-Margret. From 2000 to 2002, Adams appeared in guest roles in several television series, including That '70s Show, Charmed, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Smallville, and The West Wing.
After brief roles in three small-scale features of 2002โThe Slaughter Rule, Pumpkin, and Serving SaraโAdams got her first major role in Steven Spielberg's comedy-drama Catch Me If You Can. She played Brenda Strong, a nurse with whom Frank Abagnale Jr. (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) falls in love.
Despite the film's success and praise for her "warm presence" from Variety critic Todd McCarthy, it failed to boost her career. She was unemployed for a year after its release, leading her to almost quit film acting. Spielberg was surprised that she did not break through soon after the film's release. Adams instead enrolled in acting classes, realizing that she had "a lot to learn and a lot of self-growth to work through".
Her career prospects seemingly improved a year later when she received a lucrative offer to star as a regular in the CBS television drama Dr. Vegas, but she was dropped after a few episodes. In film, she only had a minor role in the Fred Savage-starring The Last Run (2004).
2005โ2007: Breakthrough with Junebug and Enchanted
Disillusioned by her firing from Dr. Vegas, thirty-year-old Adams considered quitting acting altogether after completing work on the independent comedy-drama Junebug, which had a production budget of under $1 million. Directed by Phil Morrison, the film featured her as Ashley Johnsten, a perky and talkative pregnant woman.
Morrison was impressed with Adams's ability to not question her character's inherently good motives. She connected with Johnsten's faith in God and spent time with Morrison in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where the film is set, attending church. She described making the film as "the summer I grew into myself", and after dyeing her hair red for the role, she decided not to go back to her natural blonde color. Junebug premiered at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, where Adams won a special jury prize.
Tim Robey of The Daily Telegraph labeled the film a "small, quiet miracle" and wrote that Adams had given "one of the most delicately funny and heartbreaking performances it's ever been my pleasure to review". Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post opined that her "radiant portrayal" reflected the film's "deeply humanist heart".
For her performance, Adams won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female and Critics' Choice Award for Best Supporting Actress, and received her first Oscar nomination (Best Supporting Actress).
Later in 2005, Adams had supporting parts in two critically panned filmsโthe romantic comedy The Wedding Date, starring Debra Messing and Dermot Mulroney, and the ensemble coming-of-age film Standing Still. Also that year, she joined the cast of the television series The Office, for the recurring role of Jim's girlfriend Katy over three episodes.
In Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006), a sports comedy from Adam McKay, Adams played the romantic interest of Will Ferrell's character, a role which critic Peter Travers deemed "quite a comedown" from her part in Junebug. She also had a minor role in the workplace comedy The Ex, starring Zach Braff and Amanda Peet.
After voicing in Walt Disney Pictures' animated comedy film Underdog (2007), Adams starred as a highly optimistic and joyous character named Giselle, who is based on members of the Disney Princess franchise, in the musical romantic comedy Enchanted. Patrick Dempsey and James Marsden co-starred as her romantic interests.
She was among 250 actresses who auditioned for the high-profile role; the studio had favored the casting of a bigger star, but the director Kevin Lima insisted on Adams due to her commitment to the part and her ability to be non-judgmental about Giselle's personality. A ball gown she had to wear for the film weighed 45 pounds (20 kg), and she fell several times under its weight.
She sang three songs for the film's soundtrackโ"True Love's Kiss", "Happy Working Song", and "That's How You Know". The critic Roger Ebert commended Adams for being "fresh and winning" in a role that "absolutely depends on effortless lovability", and Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe credited her for "demonstrat[ing] a real performer's ingenuity for comic timing and physical eloquence".
Todd McCarthy considered it to be her breakthrough role and likened her rise to stardom to that of Julie Andrews. Enchanted was a commercial success, grossing over $340 million worldwide, and Adams was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress โ Motion Picture Comedy or Musical.
After the success of Enchanted, Adams took on the part of Bonnie Bach, Congressman Charlie Wilson's assistant in Mike Nichols' political comedy-drama Charlie Wilson's War (2007), starring Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter credited Adams for being "sweetly savvy" in her part, while Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian was disappointed to see her talent wasted in a role he considered to be of minimal importance.
2008โ2012: Ingรฉnue parts and expansion to dramatic roles
The 2008 Sundance Film Festival saw the release of Sunshine Cleaning, a comedy-drama about two sisters (played by Adams and Emily Blunt) who start a crime scene clean-up business. Adams was drawn to the idea of playing someone who constantly tries to better herself. Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle found Adams to be "magical", adding that she "gives us a portrait of raging want beneath a veneer of surface diffidence".
In the 1939-set screwball comedy Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, Adams starred as an aspiring American actress in London who encounters a middle-aged governess named Miss Pettigrew (played by Frances McDormand). Stephen Holden of The New York Times drew similarities to her role in Enchanted and wrote that the "screen magic" she displays in such endearing roles "hasn't been this intense since the heyday of Jean Arthur".
Adams next starred in Doubt, an adaptation of John Patrick Shanley's play of the same name. The film tells the story of a Catholic school principal (played by Meryl Streep) who accuses a priest, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, of pedophilia; she played an innocent nun embroiled in the conflict. Shanley initially approached Natalie Portman for the part, but offered Adams the role after finding her innocent, yet intelligent, personality similar to that of Ingrid Bergman.
She identified with her character's ability to find the best in people, and described her collaboration with Streep and Hoffman as a "master class" in acting. Amy Biancolli of the Houston Chronicle wrote that Adams "sparks with distressed compassion", and Ann Hornaday believed that she "exudes just the right wide-eyed innocence". She was nominated for the Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, and BAFTA Award.
As with Junebug and Enchanted, Adams's roles in her three 2008 releases were those of the ingรฉnueโinnocent women with a cheerful personality. When asked about being typecast in such roles, she said she responds to characters who are joyful and identified with their sense of hope. She believed that despite certain similarities in their disposition, these characters were vastly different from one another; she stated, "Naรฏvetรฉ is not stupidity, and innocent people are often very complex."
The 2009 fantasy adventure film Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, starring Ben Stiller, Robin Williams and Owen Wilson, featured Adams as the aviator Amelia Earhart. It was the first motion picture to film inside the National Air and Space Museum in Washington. The director Shawn Levy said the role allowed Adams to showcase her acting range; the actress believed it to be the first time she was allowed to play a confident character on screen.
Despite mixed reviews, Adams's performance was praised. Terming her a "sparkling screen presence", Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune wrote that the film "radically improves whenever Amy Adams pops up". That same year, Adams starred in the comedy-drama Julie & Julia as disgruntled government secretary Julie Powell who decides to blog about the recipes in Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle and Julia Child's cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking; in a parallel storyline, Meryl Streep portrays Child.
She enrolled at the Institute of Culinary Education to prepare for the part. Carrie Rickey of The Philadelphia Inquirer thought the film was "as delicious as French cuisine" and found Adams to be "at her most winsome". Both Night at the Museum and Julie & Julia were commercial successes, with the former grossing $413 million.
Adams began the new decade with a leading role opposite Matthew Goode in the romantic comedy Leap Year (2010), which critic Richard Roeper believed was saved from "truly awful status" by Adams's presence. Her next release of the yearโthe boxing drama The Fighterโwas much better received. Directed by David O.
Russell, the film tells the story of boxer half-brothers Micky Ward and Dicky Eklund (played by Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale, respectively); Melissa Leo played their mother and Adams played Ward's aggressive barmaid girlfriend named Charlene Fleming. Describing her character as a "tough, sexy bitch", Russell cast Adams against type to rid her of her girl-next-door image.
The role marked a significant departure for her, and she was challenged by Russell's insistence on finding her character's strength in silence. She enrolled in an exotic dance class by trainer Sheila Kelley to find her character's eroticism. Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal found Adams to be "as tough, tender, smart, and funny as she was ethereal and delightful in Enchanted.
What an actress, and what range!" She received Academy Award, Golden Globe, and BAFTA nominations; she lost the former two to Leo. She expressed a desire to play more dramatic roles in the future.
The Disney musical The Muppets (2011) starring the eponymous puppets featured Adams and Jason Segel in live-action roles. She sang seven songs for the film's soundtrack. Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly noted that the role marked her return to her "comedian-sweetheart" persona. The following year, Adams played the Baker's Wife in the Public Theater's revival of Stephen Sondheim's musical Into the Woods, as part of the Shakespeare in the Park festival at the open-air Delacorte Theater.
It was her New York stage debut and her first theater appearance in 13 years. She agreed to the month-long production to "take on a challenge that seemed insurmountable", though she was overwhelmed and intimidated by it. She prepared with a private singing coach, but her film schedule enabled her to spend only four weeks in rehearsal.
Ben Brantley of The New York Times praised Adams's "lucidly spoken and sung performance" but criticized her for lacking the "nervy, dissatisfied restlessness" of her part.