Amy Adams
Amy Adams is an actor, born 1974.
Amy Adams has six Academy Award nominations, seven BAFTA nominations and no Oscar, which has become an odd sort of running theme around a career that is otherwise one of the most consistent of the century. She has two Golden Globes, two Primetime Emmy nominations, and has appeared three times in the annual rankings of the highest paid actresses in the world. She was born in Vicenza, Italy, in 1974.
Her particular gift is sincerity that does not curdle. Giselle in Enchanted should be insufferable inside ninety seconds and instead becomes the reason the film works; the performance is played completely straight, with no wink anywhere in it. The interesting move is that she then spent years inverting it. Sydney Prosser in American Hustle is a woman performing an identity and just barely holding the seams together. Charlene in The Fighter is warmth with a fist in it. In The Master she is the quietest person in the room and the one actually running it.
Arrival is where the two halves meet. It is a science fiction film in which the lead spends most of her screen time listening, and Adams builds an entire performance out of attention, which is much harder than it sounds and almost never rewarded. Around the prestige work she has been Lois Lane across the Snyder films, which gave her scale without giving her much to do, and she has taken real risks elsewhere: Big Eyes, Nocturnal Animals, the television miniseries Sharp Objects, and Nightbitch.
Movies (50)
- Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
- Man of Steel (2013)
- Catch Me If You Can (2002)
- Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021)
- Arrival (2016)
- Enchanted (2007)
- Her (2013)
- Justice League (2017)
- Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009)
- Leap Year (2010)
- American Hustle (2013)
- Disenchanted (2022)
- The Fighter (2010)
- Nocturnal Animals (2016)
- Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006)
- Vice (2018)
- The Master (2012)
- Cruel Intentions 2 (2000)
- Big Eyes (2014)
- Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny (2006)
- The Muppets (2011)
- Doubt (2008)
- Nightbitch (2024)
- Underdog (2007)
- Hillbilly Elegy (2020)
- Julie & Julia (2009)
- The Wedding Date (2005)
- The Woman in the Window (2021)
- Trouble with the Curve (2012)
- Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999)
TV (8)
Where to start with Amy Adams
Begin with Arrival. It is the best thing she has done and the clearest demonstration of her method, because the film hands her almost no action and she fills the space with thinking. Nothing about it is showy, which is why it is worth the attention.
Junebug is the other essential, and the one to reach for if you want to know why people started paying attention to her in the first place. From there, American Hustle and The Master make a good double bill: two women in the same era of American self-invention, one loud and one silent, both entirely in control.
Enchanted is the trick you should not skip, because playing that character without irony is genuinely difficult. The Fighter and Nocturnal Animals show the harder edges, and Sharp Objects is the long-form version of the same instincts.
The Oscar-nominated performances
Six nominations, no win, which has become its own running story. The Master is the best of them and the least rewarded kind of work: she is the quiet centre of a film about two very loud men. Arrival is the one to start with.
The comedies
Enchanted is the performance worth studying: a Disney princess played with total sincerity inside a film mocking Disney princesses, and it only works because she never once winks at the camera. Miss Pettigrew is the underseen one.
The dark and the difficult
The stretch where she moved deliberately into unlikeable and damaged parts. Sharp Objects is the best of them by a wide margin and a genuinely hard watch. Nocturnal Animals is the coldest thing she has done.
The blockbusters
Lois Lane across four films, in a version of the character with markedly less to do than the actress could handle. The Snyder cut restores some of it. This is the least interesting part of the filmography and by far the most widely seen.