Simply irresistible
Amy Adams is having one of those enchanted Manhattan moments.
“Look, it’s snowing!” she cries, looking out of the window of an Upper West Side cafe to the snowflakes gently settling on the cabs and buildings outside. “It’s sticking!”
Adams has an ability to make whatever she’s focusing on seem irresistible. There’s a sparkle to her, a glimmer that hasn’t escaped the notice of a certain co-star of hers, Meryl Streep.
“Amy has a little light on inside her that burns – sometimes a soft light, sometimes a hot little blue flame, but you are aware always of the light,” Streep, who just wrapped the drama “Doubt” with Adams, says via e-mail.
“It is her immediacy as an actress, that present quality that makes her special.”
Kevin Lima, who directed Adams in last year’s hit “Enchanted,” says: “Her soul is joyful. She’s a big laugher.”
Even as her career soars, Adams, 33, relishes small pleasures. Sure, she just sang live at the Oscars, but she is equally besotted with the mushroom soup she’s having for lunch, offering up a taste of the murky substance she swears is amazing.
Despite teasing from her friends, she still wears the Oscar sweatshirt she picked up at the nominees’ luncheon for her 2005 supporting nomination for “Junebug,” because “when we have dinner parties, and we go outside, you need an oversized sweatshirt, so I put it on.”
The more she works, the more she craves the simple things, “like going to the post office.”
She has precious little time for the small stuff these days. In “Doubt,” scheduled to open Dec. 5, Streep plays a nun suspecting a priest of abuse, and Adams is a nun caught in the middle. It’s an adaptation of John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play.
This month, she starts shooting her second Streep project, the food flick “Julie & Julia.” She’s Julie, an amateur chef who decides to cook her way through Julia Child’s classic cookbook, with Streep playing the culinary legend.
And this week, she’s on screen as flamboyant actress Delysia Lafosse in “Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day,” which opened Friday.
In the comedy of manners, Adams’ deliciously dramatic Delysia helps Frances McDormand’s dowdy governess Guinevere Pettigrew find herself.
Adams calls Delysia “a beautiful disaster” whom she just had to play. Having McDormand attached to the film, as an actor and producer, sweetened the deal.
“I’d met Frances during the Oscars,” Adams says. “We were nominated in the same category, and I’d said to my boyfriend that I absolutely have to work with her someday.
“And this came around. I was so excited. It’s right up my alley in terms of what I’m interested in, coming from theater. It’s such a throwback. It seemed like fun. Her performance lacks vanity, and she’s such a great role model for me.”
Actually, McDormand was a bit in awe of Adams when they met during the 2006 awards season.
“I was immediately impressed at how much fun she was having while looking absolutely fabulous in her couture gowns,” McDormand says in an e-mail. “I don’t manage to do either of those things with much grace …
“Our next encounter was at a mutual friend’s house for dinner the summer that Amy was in NYC filming ‘Enchanted.’ She came in a cute strapless cotton sundress and 3-inch strappy sandals. I was agog. I, of the hiking boot generation, cannot even get to a cab and through dinner sitting down at a restaurant in such shoes.”
Fashion differences aside, Adams and McDormand clicked while shooting “Miss Pettigrew” in London.
Adams, McDormand writes, “gave Delysia the right amount of innocence and spice that the story required. It’s not easy to have a room full of men thinking of you as a bowl of strawberry ice cream and them all wanting the spoon and keep your wits about you to get the job done.”
Does Adams see anything of herself in Delysia, who juggles men and social engagements with equal aplomb?
“She’s a survivor. She’s a bootstrap girl. She’s living a life that isn’t organic to her, and I can honestly say that I feel that way at times,” says Adams, who has been with actor boyfriend Darren Le Gallo for six years.
“In a way, everybody does, but I never thought I’d be where I am today, so I really related to her in the struggle to survive.”
Adams prides herself on being a working actress who paid her dues for years with turns in “Cruel Intentions 2” (2000), “Catch Me If You Can” (2002) and “Serving Sara” (2002).
She once hit a yearlong dry spell and started to have doubts.
“I thought maybe I should move to New York, maybe I should do something else,” she says. “It wasn’t that I was quitting or making a dramatic statement. It was more like maybe this just wasn’t a good fit. … And then at Sundance, everything shifted.”
That’s when Adams picked up an acting prize for playing a pregnant, wide-eyed chatterbox in “Junebug,” which led to her first Oscar nomination – and eventually to a princess named Giselle in Disney’s “Enchanted.”
Even as her list of credits grows, Adams freely dishes about working at the Gap in Atlanta after she graduated from high school. One day, she had a memorable encounter with one of the city’s famous residents.
“Whitney Houston came in. Someone dared me to do ‘the Gap act’ on her,” Adams says.
“So I went up to her like I didn’t know who she was, and I said, ‘Hi, I just wanted to let you know about our sale items and make sure to check out our new colors.’ She looked at me like I was crazy.”
Those who know Adams say success won’t spoil her – or send her to rehab.
“She’ll be one of those actresses who commits herself to the work because it’s more important than the celebrity,” says “Enchanted” director Lima.
“She’s level-headed. Success has come at an age for her when she can really handle it. I wish more actresses could find themselves at this age.”