Amy Adams' Impressive Career In Pictures

Amy Lou Adams was born August 20th, 1974 in Vicenza, Italy. While she was born in Europe, she was raised in Castle Rock, Colorado. The fourth oldest of seven siblings, she ended up discovering a calling for acting at age 18… after having trained to be a ballerina, she found herself to be better suited to musical theatre!

After having attended local auditions in Chanhassen, Minnesota, where she had moved to pursue community theatre, Adams landed her very first film role! The 1999 beauty pageant satire Drop Dead Gorgeous had her playing stuck-up cheerleader “Leslie Miller”. Thanks to co-star Kirstie Alley giving her encouragement though, Adams made the big move to Los Angeles the same year of the film’s release, hoping to begin her career as an actress in Hollywood.

Steven Spielberg’s 2002 comedy-drama Catch Me If You Can gave Adams her first major film role! Adams played the role of “Brenda Strong”, a nurse who co-star Leonardo DiCaprio’s character “Frank Abagnale, Jr.” falls in love with. While it was her first role in a major studio film however, the film failed to launch her career, and she was unemployed for a year afterward.

This is the role that really got Amy Adams on the radar! The 2005 independent film where Adams played pregnant “Ashley Johnsten” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival the same year, and she was awarded a special jury prize for her performance. In a fun bit of trivia, it’s also the film that made her dye her hair its now trademark red, as Adams is surprisingly a natural blonde!

Given Adams’ musical theatre past, it’s no surprise that she found herself starring in a role where her character sings! Disney’s musical fairytale saw Adams play “Giselle”, a princess who suddenly finds herself transported to modern-day New York City, and made her known to a brand new audience. Two of the songs Adams performs in the film, “How Does He Know?” and “Happy Working Song” were actually nominated for the Oscar for Best Original Song in 2008!

Adams co-starred with Emily Blunt in the offbeat 2008 comedy, which had the two playing dysfunctional sisters who get into the business of cleaning up crime scenes! Adams played “Rose Lorkowski”, the more ambitious of the pair. The film debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, and generally received positive reviews.

Adams starred in this biographical comedy opposite Hollywood heavyweight Meryl Streep! She played “Julie Powell”, a blogger who set herself the challenge of cooking all the recipes in Julia Child’s first cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The film received modest reviews, although Streep ended up garnering most of the attention for it.

Adams’ foray into the action genre came when she was cast in the iconic role of “Superman’s” girlfriend, reporter “Lois Lane”, in the DC Cinematic Universe! The 2013 Zack Snyder reboot of the Superman franchise, Man of Steel, was the first of three films where Adams would take on the character, also featuring in 2016’s Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice and 2017’s superhero team-up Justice League. 

Part of an all-star ensemble cast that included Christian Bale, Jennifer Lawrence, and Jeremy Renner, Adams played con artist “Sydney Prosser” in this 2013 dramedy inspired by the infamous FBI Abscam operation of the 1970s. While the film itself garnered mixed reviews, Adams’ performance was praised, and she received an Academy Award nomination for “Best Actress” in 2014. 

This intellectual sci-fi thriller inspired by Ted Chiang’s short story “Story of Your Life” gave Adams the chance to play quite a unique role! In the 2017 film, Adams starred as linguist “Louise Banks”, who becomes employed by the U.S. military in the hopes of being able to communicate with an alien presence. Arrival performed well at the box office, but despite Adams’ performance in particular being critically acclaimed, she surprisingly did not receive an Academy Award nomination for her role.