Amy Adams
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Amy Lou Adams (born August 20, 1974) is an American actress.
five Academy Awards
six British Academy Film Awards
She is known for both her comedic and dramatic performances, and as of 2017 is among the highest-paid actresses in the world. She has received several awards, including two Golden Globes, and has been nominated for five Academy Awards and six British Academy Film Awards.
Catch Me If You Can
Junebug
Born in Vicenza, Italy, and raised in Castle Rock, Colorado, Adams is the fourth of seven siblings. She trained to be a ballerina, but at age 18 found musical theater a better fit, and from 1994 to 1998 she worked in dinner theater. She made her feature film debut with a supporting part in the 1999 satire Drop Dead Gorgeous. After moving to Los Angeles, she made several guest appearances in television, and took on “mean girl” parts in small-scale features. Her first major role came in Steven Spielberg’s 2002 biopic Catch Me If You Can, opposite Leonardo DiCaprio, but she was unemployed for a year afterward. Her breakthrough came in the part of a loquacious pregnant woman in the 2005 independent film Junebug.
Disney Princess
American Hustle
Arrival
Nocturnal Animals
The 2007 musical Enchanted, in which she played a cheerful Disney Princess, was Adams’ first major success as a leading lady. She followed it by playing naive, optimistic women in a series of films, including the 2008 drama Doubt. She subsequently played stronger female parts to positive reviews in the sports film The Fighter (2010), and the psychological drama The Master (2012). In 2013 she began portraying Lois Lane in superhero films set in the DC Extended Universe. She won two consecutive Golden Globe Awards for Best Actress for playing a seductive con artist in the crime film American Hustle (2013) and the troubled painter Margaret Keane in the biopic Big Eyes (2014). In 2016, she received acclaim for her leading roles in the science fiction film Arrival and the psychological thriller Nocturnal Animals.
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
Adams’ stage roles include the Public Theater’s revival of Into the Woods in 2012, in which she played the Baker’s Wife. 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. Adams is married to the actor Darren Le Gallo, with whom she has a daughter.
After a one-year absence from the screen, Adams had three film releases in 2016. She first reprised the role of Lois Lane in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which marked the second installment in the DC Extended Universe after Man of Steel. Despite a negative critical reception for favoring visual effects over a coherent narrative, the film earned over $870 million to rank as her highest-grossing release. In her next two releases—the science fiction film Arrival and the psychological thriller Nocturnal Animals—Adams played “emotionally guarded, fiercely intelligent” women to positive reviews. Based on Austin Wright’s novel Tony and Susan, Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals tells the story of an unhappily married art dealer named Susan (played by Adams), who is traumatized when reading a violent novel written by her ex-husband (played by Jake Gyllenhaal). Adams found little resemblance between herself and her “poised” and “aloof” character and modeled Susan’s personality on that of Ford. Stephanie Zacharek of Time considered the film to be visually arresting yet thematically weak, but praised Adams and Gyllenhaal for making their character’s pain seem genuine.
sixth BAFTA nomination
seventh Golden Globe nomination
Arrival, directed by Denis Villeneuve and based on Ted Chiang’s short story “Story of Your Life”, ranks among the most acclaimed films of Adams’ career. The film is about Louise Banks, a linguist (played by Adams), who experiences strange visions when she is hired by the American government to interpret the language of extraterrestrials. She was drawn to the idea of playing an intellectual female lead and connected with the film’s theme of unity and compassion. She watched documentaries on linguistics to prepare for the part. Writing for The Atlantic, Christoper Orr deemed Adams’ performance to be “mesmerizingly open, by turns uplifting and sorrowful”, and Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times believed that the film was a “showcase for her ability to quietly and effectively meld intelligence, empathy and reserve”. Arrival was a commercial success, earning over $200 million against a $47 million budget. Adams received her sixth BAFTA nomination and seventh Golden Globe nomination, both in the Best Actress category.1 Several journalists expressed disappointment over her failure to receive an Osc nomination for it. Adams played Lois Lane for the third time in Justice League (2017), an ensemble film about the titular superheroes. The critic Tim Grierson of Screen International commented that despite providing “emotional resonance” to the film, Adams’ talents were wasted in a thankless supporting role.
