Like many brilliant women throughout cinema history who toil in obscurity before eventually being recognized for their greatness, it took some of us a while to notice Amy Adams. After all, Adams wasn’t always enjoying the kinds of starry, awards-friendly roles she is now more or less synonymous with. For some time, Adams was competing for screentime with male co-stars who happened to be comedy icons (“Talladega Nights”) and getting cast in such illustrious parts like “Gorgeous Woman” in mid-tier farces (“Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny”). Adams was always one of the more memorable elements of the films she was cast in early in her career; see, for example, her show-stopping tour-de-force turn in “Drop Dead Gorgeous.” Still, many of us wondered: when was this exceptionally gifted actress going to start landing the roles she so clearly deserved?
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Of course, Adam’s fortunes have changed significantly since her screen debut in that recently-reappraised dark cult comedy from 1999. The actress has since gone on to work with some of the most prominent auteurs in Hollywood, including Paul Thomas Anderson, Denis Villeneuve, David O. Russell, Adam McKay, and more. She has displayed an astonishing versatility in various genres, from frothy mainstream comedies to demanding period pieces to mega-budgeted superhero tentpoles like “Man of Steel” and “Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice.” What Adams brings to all her roles, regardless of genre, is a deep well of empathy. She is one of our most human movie stars, which is why she seems capable of effortlessly embodying any type of person, from an earthy, working-class East Coaster to a fabulously wealthy fixture of the Los Angeles art scene.
READ MORE: Amy Adams To Star In Adam McKay’s New Netflix Series About Walmart
Adam’s next role is in Ron Howard’s awards hopeful “Hillbilly Elegy,” a Netflix-produced adaptation of the New York Times-bestselling memoir of the same name. “Hillbilly Elegy” looks like unapologetic Oscar bait, and since Adams has been snubbed so many times, can you really blame her for chasing down the dream by any means necessary? Adams co-stars in “Hillbilly Elegy” with Glenn Close – another actress who has frequently been nominated by the Academy without ever taking home a statue – and despite some less-than-great early notices from critics, you can probably expect to hear buzz around her performance from now until next year’s Oscar ceremony, if and when that happens.
In anticipation of “Hillbilly Elegy,” we thought we would take a look back at some of the most essential performances that Amy Adams has given us, from 1999 to now. “Hillbilly Elegy” will be released on Netflix on November 24.
“Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” (2006)
When most of us think of “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby,” Adam McKay’s uproarious and totally insane lampoon of NASCAR culture and red-state exceptionalism, we think of the maniac chemistry exhibited by its stars, Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly. “Shake n’ Bake,” the merits of praying to Baby Jesus, the scene where Ferrell’s egocentric drivin’ machine stabs himself in the leg just to (incorrectly) prove that he’s handicapped: these are scenes that have infiltrated the larger pop culture lexicon, and 21st-century comedy is all the richer for it. However, we would be remiss if we were to overlook Amy Adams’ underappreciated turn as Susan, Ricky Bobby’s put-upon assistant and unexpected love interest who, in due course, comes to his rescue and helps him understand that he doesn’t need to “think” – he simply needs to drive. “Talladega Nights” is a bawdy satirical boy’s comedy, so the screenplay dictates that the lion’s share of the laughs must go to Ferrell, Reilly, and Sacha Baron Cohen, playing the definitive stereotype of haughty French arrogance, the kind of man who brags that France invented both democracy and the ménage a trois. All the same, Adams makes a hell of an impression in what ultimately amounts to a small part, culminating in what might be one of cinema’s most absurd inspirational speeches… you know, the one where Susan tells Ricky he needs to “wrestle his fear to the ground like a demon cobra… and ride that fear like a skeleton horse, straight through the gates of hell.” Few actresses can manage to look graceful whilst doing a girly hair-flip straight out of a Whitesnake music video. Amy Adams, bless her, is one of those actresses.
“Junebug” (2005)
Over the course of the last decade, Amy Adams has been nominated by the Academy over five times, and yet, somehow, has not taken home a single Oscar. In that context, Adams’ buoyant and fearless performance in the Phil Morrison-directed “Junebug” is a milestone in her career in that it marks a shift towards more serious, multifaceted roles, and also marks the first time that the Academy saw it appropriate to recognize the then up-and-coming actress for her readily apparent talent. “Junebug” is a sweet and deftly observant dramedy about what it means to accept your family, and Adams manages to give arguably the movie’s best performance without ever chewing the scenery or failing to make room for her co-stars, an ensemble that also includes Celia Weston and Alessandro Nivola. Adams plays Ashley, a pregnant, Meerkat-loving former cheerleader who has lived in the same small North Carolina town her whole life. Ashley is kind and unassuming, and she believes that having a child with her perpetually downbeat husband Johnny (Ben McKenzie) will ameliorate her marital woes. Ultimately, “Junebug” is a comedy about a clash of cultures, a series of fissions between the values of red-state America and those who hail from a more urban environment. One could argue that Morrison has yet to make good on the promise of his impressive debut, but if nothing else, Adams has made good on the promise of her performance in this film.
“Doubt” (2008)
Particularly when compared to the flashier work she would do for directors like David O. Russell in subsequent years, the subtlety and grace of Adams’ performance in the gripping crisis-of-faith drama “Doubt” is really something else. Produced by Scott Rudin and adapted by director John Patrick Shanley from his Pulitzer and Tony-winning stage play, “Doubt” is a heavyweight moral allegory that features some of the most confident acting work Adams has ever done. Adams has one of the most expressive faces in modern movies, and she says a great deal with her eyes in “Doubt,” acquitting herself rather brilliantly to the chilly ethical and regional landscape in which this film unfolds. She’s particularly generous in her scenes with Meryl Streep, who is admittedly afforded most of the film’s best dialogue. The two central characters are a study in contrasts: Streep’s character is combative and world-weary, Adams would prefer we were all just kind to each other and leave it at that, as if it were all so simple. Like many Amy Adams characters, Sister James is pure almost to the point of naiveté, although she IS the one who quietly urges Streep’s tough-as-nails Sister Aloysius to keep an eye on the new priest on the parish, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s mysterious Father Flynn. The way James pokes and prods at her fellow sister’s sense of justice is mesmerizing to watch. “Doubt” is a stagey affair, and also a movie that gets by considerably on the strength of its performances. In that regard, Adams is nothing less than indispensable to the film’s overall success.
“The Fighter” (2010)
“The Fighter” is a movie filled with so much shrieking, cursing, and fisticuffs – which is just another way of saying that the movie was directed by David O. Russell – that any instance of well-adjusted human behavior comes as a welcome breath of fresh air. Although the movie was sold by Paramount and the Weinstein Company as an Oscar-friendly Palookaville boxing drama, “The Fighter” has more in common with something like “A Woman Under The Influence” than one of the “Rocky” films. It’s a histrionic, proudly untidy movie, filled with squabbling, bedlam, and fights that occur both inside and outside of the ring. Adams provides most of “The Fighter’s” quieter moments playing Charlene Fleming: the tough-as-nails bartender girlfriend of real-life Boston prizefighter Micky Ward. Adams is called upon to do something very difficult here: play the most normal character in a film otherwise filled with lunatics, a feat she would manage once again in Russell’s “American Hustle.” She’s aces in a tricky part, making magic out of a role that is occasionally under-conceptualized. It’s especially fun to see Adams go toe-to-toe with Ward’s disastrously confrontational female brood (in other words, his harem of shit-talking sisters and his unapologetically brassy mother, the latter played to the hilt by Melissa Leo), and grin with mirth as her character greets the rudeness of Ward’s family with kindness. Adams flew under the radar when compared to co-stars Christian Bale and Leo, both of whom gave ostentatious, scenery-chewing supporting performances and were rewarded with Oscars for their efforts. Adams is genuinely heartbreaking in her depiction of an ordinary woman who realizes too late that the man she loves is being dragged down by the dysfunctional, dangerously erratic behavior of his family. To trot out a term that often gets used to describe the male leads of boxing films, hers is a knockout turn.
“The Master” (2012)
Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master” is about MANY things, one of them being men and masculinity. Knowing that, it makes sense that the two performances we discuss most when we talk about this film are the career-best lead turns from Anderson familiars Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman. And yet, as always, Amy Adams manages to subvert our expectations in a small but essential part, standing toe-to-toe with these acting giants while giving her most coiled, menacing performance in the process. Adams is an actress that we frequently underestimate, which works to the advantage of her part in Anderson’s dreamy study of mid-century American belief structures. She plays Peggy Dodd, devoted, perpetually underestimated wife and an ardent true believer of Hoffman’s bloviating charlatan, Lancaster Dodd. Hoffman makes his character a tremendous ham, always sucking the energy out of the room with his long-winded, often-nonsensical soliloquies about “processing” and “time holes,” but even during the infamous “Pigfuck” sequence, as we’re listening to Hoffman berate a skeptic played by the late, great Christopher Evan Welch, we’re also watching Adams in the corner of the frame, shooting daggers at the man with her eyes. While Lancaster is the one charming prospective acolytes at parties and delivering speeches to rapt crowds, “The Master” implies that Peggy is the one truly pulling the strings. In a film where the men are frequently drunk, inchoate, a mess, Peggy’s cold-blooded self-assurance and surface-level Middle American charm are authentically chilling. It’s a shame that Adams and Anderson never worked together after this film, but hey, one can always dream of a reunion.
“Her” (2013)
Amy Adams has become one of our more invaluable lead actresses over the course of the last decade, but as one good look at this list will hopefully prove, she’s just as crucial to the success of a film when she’s serving as a supporting player. Such is the case for Spike Jonze’s radiant futurist romance “Her,” in which Adams plays the former lover of Joaquin Phoenix’s befuddled, heartsick protagonist, Theodore Twombly. Obviously, “Her” is remembered seven years after its release for being the movie where Joaquin Phoenix falls hard for a sentient operating system named Samantha, and while it IS that, “Her” also offers a sincerely lovely and affecting look at how we move on and mature after heartbreak. This motif gets a workout in the scenes that Adams and Phoenix share throughout “Her”: there is a rich sense of these character’s shared histories, both a wistful sense of yearning for what once was, and also a tremble of existential apprehension about what the future might hold in store for them. While the world of “Her” is fantastical and heightened in that inimitable, Spike Jonze-y way, Adams works to ground the movie in something cogent by playing her character, also named Amy, as a completely normal human being. The teary, sun-kissed final frames are flush with ambiguity as well as a sense of reluctant hope, and Adams’ revelatory performance ended up being one of the big reasons why “Her” was one of the great movies of 2013.
“American Hustle” (2013)
There’s so much pomp and extravagance in David O. Russell’s “American Hustle” that it can be easy to forget that the film, at its core, is a story of desperate, flawed people just striving to get by. No actor in the ensemble personifies this sense of fraught circumstance better than Adams, who plays Sydney Prosser, a seasoned con-woman who falls for unscrupulous scammer Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) before Bradley Cooper’s mercurial fed propels her towards a crisis of consciousness. Sydney claims to be descended from English royalty, and Adams’ seesawing act between the posh ruse that this woman presents on her surface and the grubby nature of her blue-collar roots is a spellbinding thing to witness. In a film full of larger-than-life performances, Amy keeps Sydney refreshingly down-to-earth, even if the situations she so often finds herself in are consistently outlandish. As anyone who’s seen “Talladega Nights” knows, Adams has a real gift for remaining grounded in the midst of a zany narrative. She lent a real sense of grittiness to “The Fighter,” her previous collaboration with Russell, and she does the same thing here, even as the movie itself grows more untethered and ridiculous. We now know that Russell was, apparently, not too kind to Adams on the set of this film, prompting none other than Christian Bale to get in the controversial director’s face. To the actress’s immense credit, she managed to still give an astonishing performance amidst what was rumored to be a chaotic and somewhat out-of-control set. Although Bale and Cooper emerge as the dual protagonists of “American Hustle,” Amy Adams’ Sydney Prosser feels indelible and memorable enough to hold down a movie of her own.
“Arrival” (2016)
Adams has worked with a few big filmmakers – Adam McKay is one, David O. Russell is another – who could be called “actor’s directors.” These are filmmakers who seem to enjoy letting their actors off the leash: actor’s directors let their actors improvise, play around, and discover new things within the scene. It does not seem safe to assume that Denis Villeneuve is one of those directors. Villeneuve’s films are steely, portentous, and unerringly meticulous in their arrangement; every directorial decision he makes seems to come from a place of painstaking deliberation. There’s a world where “Arrival,” his 2016 sci-fi drama, could have been nothing more than a detached, cerebral, skillfully made intellectual exercise. Thankfully, “Arrival” is less interested in math-brained puzzle logic and more interested in the depths of our collective human experience – and who better to act as the human core of your movie than Amy Adams? Adams plays Louise Banks in “Arrival,” a grieving linguist who is summoned by the United States military (personified here by a bizarrely-accented Forest Whitaker) to decode transmissions sent to earth by way of twelve alien spacecraft stationed at random points around the globe. There’s a lot of exposition and world-building in “Arrival,” but thanks to the valiant efforts of Adams and co-star Jeremy Renner to render their characters more than just pawns who exist at the whim of the screenplay, “Arrival” ends up being Villeneuve’s most human film by a mile. Why Adams didn’t win the Oscar that year is, frankly, beyond us.
“Nocturnal Animals” (2016)
Tom Ford’s “Nocturnal Animals” is one strange movie: a fusion of desert pulp, Paul Verhoeven-inspired decadence, and self-lacerating auto-critique that’s equal parts brilliant and vexing. Here, Adams plays wealthy Los Angeles gallery owner Susan Morrow, who has grown disenchanted with her life of practiced politesse, bored with her visibly distant husband (Armie Hammer), and disengaged from the procession of stilted dinner parties she feels obligated to attend. One day, Susan is sent a copy of a manuscript, “Nocturnal Animals,” written by her estranged lover, Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal). “Nocturnal Animals” turns out to be a beastly tale of retribution, the kind of blistering, disturbing neo-noir that Jim Thompson probably could have knocked out in a weekend. Susan is rattled by the text, and reading it prompts her to reminisce about happier days with her onetime beau, and what may have brought them to this strange juncture in their lives. “Nocturnal Animals” is both a meta-treatise on the creative process and also a sordid revenge thriller, and while it doesn’t stick the landing 100% of the time, Adams is astonishing in it. She conveys the pain of Susan’s slow-burning, inexorable unraveling, which builds to a purposefully anticlimactic denouement that’s genuinely disarming in its cynicism. Especially compared to the more outsized work of co-stars Gyllenhaal and Michael Shannon (the latter of whom plays a disturbingly committed detective named Bobby Sands), Adams’s work is intriguing discreet, particularly considering the overtly theatrical nature of the movie itself. It’s hard to sympathize with a wealthy art-world capitalist who has a Jeff Koons balloon dog in her backyard, but Adams somehow makes us care for Susan. When we think about “Nocturnal Animals” now, we mostly think about Adams’ performance: her extraordinarily expressive nonverbal acting, her quiet displays of revulsion and remorse, and her devastating reaction when Susan finally realizes that the past can never be fully re-written.
“Sharp Objects” (2018)
Director Jean-Marc Vallée possesses a gift for eliciting electric turns out of his lead actresses. He assisted Reese Witherspoon in giving one of her most raw and exposed performances to date in the underrated tale of redemption that was “Wild,” and he was at least partly responsible for the uniformly excellent first season of HBO’s runaway hit, “Big Little Lies.” After the surprise success of that widely-watched drama-fest, it made sense that HBO wanted to re-team with Vallée for another buzzy limited prestige series with a few in-demand actresses at its center. Cue “Sharp Objects,” a grisly and serrated adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s well-received literary thriller of the same name. Those who were hoping for “Big Little Lies: Redux” may have been puzzled by “Sharp Objects”; although the show retains Vallée’s dreamlike, elliptical editing style, it’s a far ghastlier piece of entertainment that eschews lifestyle porn and the bitchy exploits of affluent Monterey moms for an unflinching examination of one woman’s history of trauma. Adams stars as Camille Preaker, a journalist with a drinking problem and a torrid past who returns to her go-nowhere hometown to investigate a series of brutal murders. Adams is aided by a terrific ensemble here, including Chris Messina as a humorless cop who is often referred to by his shorthand nickname, “Kansas City,” and also Patricia Clarkson as Camille’s preening socialite mother, who LIVES for the drama, and also happens to know the dreadful secrets of everyone in town. “Sharp Objects” shot itself in the foot with a disjunctive finale that worked to undercut the grim power of what had come before, but there’s no doubt that the show was bolstered considerably by Adam’s fearsome and formidable central performance.
“Vice” (2018)
One of the benefits of being the guy behind modern comedy classics like “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” and “Step Brothers” is that great actors are going to want to work with you. How else does Adam McKay get Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, AND Steve Carrell to star in his first pivot into semi-dramatic filmmaking, 2015’s “The Big Short?” Google the cast for McKay’s upcoming 2021 comedy “Don’t Look Up” if you don’t believe us – it’s one of the starriest ensembles in recent movie history. “Vice” is McKay’s smart, embittered, critically divisive takedown of former V.P. Dick Cheney, and while the film is undeniably tailored around Christian Bale’s brilliant, larger-than-life performance as the former Halliburton CEO and neo-conservative warmonger, it is once again Amy Adams’ unobtrusively forceful turn as Lynne Cheney that anchors this daffy, didactic political epic to an emotionally authentic core. Lynne is depicted here as a tireless believer in her husband’s ambitions, campaigning for his causes and constantly urging him to want more for himself. It’s a difficult thing, to embody a public persona whom many of us spent eight years despising. While male co-stars Sam Rockwell and Steve Carrell go admirably BIG in their respective interpretations of George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, Adams’ take on the former second lady feels more down-to-earth… and more disturbing for the restraint. Opinions vary on the sledgehammer approach McKay adopted in “Vice,” but there’s no denying the shrewd power of Adams’ work here.
Honorable Mention:
Adams shares some sparkling onscreen chemistry with none other than Leonardo Dicaprio in Steven Spielberg’s fleet-footed, deliriously enjoyable con-man movie “Catch Me If You Can,” even if the film arguably doesn’t make as much time for her character as it should. We’d also be remiss to not mention Adams’ laugh-out-loud scene-stealer of a debut turn in “Drop Dead Gorgeous,” where she holds her own in a riotous ensemble of funny women that includes Ellen Barkin, Kirsten Dunst, Allison Janney, Denise Richards, and more. Adams had some fun playing Bruce Campbell’s mistress, of all things, in the Reginald Hudlin directed rom-com “Serving Sara,” and she made a meal out of Aaron Sorkin’s characteristically loquacious screenplay for Mike Nichols’ final film, 2007’s “Charlie Wilson’s War.”
Adams finally began to garner some considerable mainstream acceptance upon the release of Disney’s children’s fantasy “Enchanted,” and just two years later, she proved to be a more-than-capable screen partner with Meryl Streep in the winning, Nora Ephron-directed “Julie and Julia” (which was itself a sort of unofficial “Doubt” reunion). Her understated turn in the 2010 romantic comedy “Leap Year” is pretty great, even when the movie isn’t, just as her screen persona is strangely well-suited to the childlike, joyous tone of James Bobin’s 2011 “Muppets” movie. Adams also works wonders with a thankless part in the 2012 film adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s “On The Road,” where she plays seminal female beat author Joan Vollmer. Two years later, she went on to make a very fine Margaret Keane in the Tim Burton-directed biopic, “Big Eyes.”
In spite of the critical drubbing these types of movies sometimes take, it’s hard not to argue that Adams does rock-solid work in Zack Snyder’s D.C. films; say what you will about those much-discussed works of pop culture revisionism, but giving an emotionally believable performance in a movie like “Justice League” is not easy work.
In terms of upcoming projects, Adams has Joe Wright’s twice-delayed murder mystery-thriller “The Woman In The Window” on her plate, as well as the hotly anticipated “Dear Evan Hansen,” an adaptation of the popular 2015 stage musical of the same name. If nothing else, her involvement in those films makes them worth looking forward to.