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Amy Adams

Amy Adams has built a career on the tension between warmth and steel. She can make optimism feel purposeful rather than naïve, then turn around and play guarded, formidable or quietly menacing without losing the human detail underneath. Born in Aviano, Italy, to American parents while her father was serving in the United States Army, Adams grew up as one of seven children and later settled with her family in Castle Rock, Colorado. Dance was her first serious ambition, but musical theatre proved a better fit. Her professional career began in a 1994 dinner-theatre production of A Chorus Line, where the job included waiting tables before performing. Several years on the dinner-theatre circuit gave her a demanding foundation in acting, singing and dancing. Early screen work included Drop Dead Gorgeous, television guest roles and Brenda Strong in Catch Me If You Can. The decisive shift came with Junebug, in which she played the talkative, deeply hopeful Ashley Johnsten. The performance earned Adams a Sundance special jury prize, an Independent Spirit Award and her first Academy Award nomination. Enchanted made full use of her musical-theatre background. As Giselle, Adams committed completely to the character’s storybook joy while finding the comic timing needed to place her in modern New York. She later pushed against that sunny screen image with roles including the tough Charlene Fleming in The Fighter, the controlled Peggy Dodd in The Master and a seductive con artist in American Hustle, for which she won a Golden Globe. Her quieter work can be just as forceful. In Arrival, she played linguist Louise Banks with intelligence, empathy and reserve, while HBO’s Sharp Objects gave her the darker role of reporter Camille Preaker; Adams also served as an executive producer on the miniseries. Across musicals, dramas, comedy, television, theatre and voice work, her range comes from more than transformation. It comes from treating hope, toughness and vulnerability as qualities that can exist in the same person.