Amy Lou Adams, (born August 20, 1974) is an American actress. She began her performing career on stage in dinner theaters before making her screen debut in the 1999 black comedy film Drop Dead Gorgeous. After a series of TV guest appearances and roles in B movies, she landed the role of Brenda Strong in 2002’s Catch Me If You Can, but her breakthrough role was in the 2005 independent film Junebug, playing Ashley Johnsten, for which she received critical acclaim and an Academy Award nomination.

Adams subsequently starred in Disney’s 2007 film Enchanted, which was a financial and critical success, and received a Golden Globe Award nomination for her performance as Giselle. She received her second Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations the following year for her role as a young nun named Sister James in Doubt. Though she has appeared in a range of dramatic and comedic roles, Adams has gained a reputation for playing characters with cheerful and sunny dispositions.

The success of Enchanted increased Adams’ media exposure during the 2007–08 film awards season. As well as appearing on the covers of Interview, Elle and the Hollywood issue of Vanity Fair, which named her as one of the “10 fresh faces of 2008″, Adams hosted the seventh episode of the 33rd season of Saturday Night Live in March 2008. In the episode, she played various characters, including Heidi Klum, as well as singing “What is This Feeling?” from Wicked in a mock battle with SNL cast member Kristen Wiig during the opening monologue.

Adams’ next project was Sunshine Cleaning, an independent film shot in and around Albuquerque, New Mexico from February to March in 2007. She plays a single mother who starts her own crime scene clean-up business in order to make enough money to send her son to a private school. The film premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival as one of the most anticipated titles, but received mixed reviews and wasn’t sold to a distributor as quickly as expected. Its theatrical release is scheduled for 2009.

Her first theatrically released film of 2008 was the 1939-set film Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, in which she plays Delysia Lafosse, an aspiring American actress living in London whose life is changed after meeting a governess named Miss Pettigrew, played by Frances McDormand. While the film received generally favorable reviews, Adams’ role was noted to be similar to her joyful and naïve characters in Junebug and Enchanted. Carina Chocano of Los Angeles Times stated that “Adams is amazingly adept at playing smart playing dumb”. Similarly, Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that “Adams more or less reprises her princess from Enchanted, only with a beguiling touch of ditzy naughtiness”.

When asked whether she is in danger of being typecast, Adams responded, “Not at this point… Right now I’m just doing what I enjoy and I’ve done some different films, I’ve done some different types of roles. I’ve done drama this year, we had a film at Sundance (Sunshine Cleaning), but I enjoy playing upbeat characters, I really do because you take your characters home with you whether you intend to or not.” In another interview, Adams said, “I think I just respond to those kinds of characters… They’re so layered, and I love the fact that they’ve made this choice to be joyful… I really identify with that sense of hope.”[41] She also noted that before dyeing her natural blonde hair red, she mostly played the role of “the bitchy girl”.

In late 2008, Adams starred in Doubt, an adaptation of John Patrick Shanley’s play of the same name, as Sister James alongside Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Viola Davis. After being informed of the project by her Sunshine Cleaning co-star, Emily Blunt, Adams pursued the role of Sister James but was told that it had already been offered to another actor. Shanley eventually cast Adams in the role because “she’s got this Ingrid Bergman thing going on, this luminosity. You see a good person struggling in this complicated world. She’s fiercely intelligent but has this peculiar innocence about her. She has a beautiful face of light.” On acting alongside Streep and Hoffman, Adams revealed that there was “a sense of uncertainty, a sense of doubt, a sense of wanting to please these amazing actors”. The film was well-received by the critics, while Adams’ role was noted to be the “least-showy” among the four major parts. Though her performance was criticized by Manohla Dargis of The New York Times as “unsteady”,[46] Todd McCarthy of Variety commented that “Adams does all anyone could with the role of a nice young nun”. Mick LaSalle of San Francisco Chronicle wrote: “Adams provides one of the film’s singular advantages. She takes the role of Sister James, which onstage seemed little more than a sounding board for Sister Aloysius, and turns the young nun into someone quite specific and lovely.” Adams was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the 81st Academy Awards, the 66th Golden Globe Awards, the 15th Screen Actors Guild Awards, and the 62nd British Academy Film Awards.

In 2009, Adams will portray Amelia Earhart in Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian. She will then appear in Julie & Julia as a frustrated temp secretary, Julie Powell, who decides to cook all of the recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Her other upcoming film projects include: Leap Year, a romantic comedy scheduled to begin filming in March 2009; Daughter of the Queen of Sheba; and an adaptation of Adena Halpern’s novel The Ten Best Days of My Life.

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