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Amy Adams In short
Artistic Name	Amy Adams
Birth Name	Amy Lou Adams
Date of Birth	August 20, 1974
Place of birth	Harlow, Essex - England
Height	5 ft 4 in
Hair color	Red
Eye color	Blue
Occupation	Actress
Quotes	"I think a lot of times we don't pay enough attention to people with a positive attitude because we assume they are naive or stupid or unschooled. But what if she sees the truth about her life, understands it all and ultimately makes the choice that this is what she wants? Is she goofy? Yes. But she could ultimately be the most intelligent person in the movie.." "IThat's the bottom line -- that no one gets hurt, no one gets injured, or hurts someone else while they're on the road"

Amy Adams Biography

Amy Adams was born in Italy to American parents Kathryn and Richard Adams, while her father was a U.S. serviceman.

She was raised in a Mormon family of seven children in Castle Rock, Colorado. Adams sang in the school choir at Douglas County High School and was an apprentice dancer at a local dance company, with the ambition of becoming a ballerina. However, she worked as a greeter at The Gap and as a Hooters hostess to support herself before finding work as a dancer at Boulder's Dinner Theatre and Country Dinner Playhouse in such productions as "Brigadoon" and "A Chorus Line." It was there that she was spotted by a Minneapolis dinner-theater director who asked her to move to Chanhassen, Minnesota for more regional dinner theater work.

Nursing a pulled muscle that kept her from dancing, she was free to audition for a part in Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999), which was filming nearby in Minnesota. During the filming, Kirstie Alley encouraged her to move to Los Angeles, where she soon won a part in the Fox television version of the film Cruel Intentions (1999) in the part played in the film by Sarah Michelle Gellar, Kathryn Merteuil. Although three episodes were filmed, the troubled series never aired. Instead, parts of the episodes were cobbled together and released as the direct-to-video Cruel Intentions 2 (2000).

After more failed television spots, she landed a major role in Catch Me If You Can (2002) playing opposite Leonardo DiCaprio. But this did not provide the break-through she might have hoped for, with no work being offered for about a year. She eventually returned to television, and joined the short-lived series 'Dr. Vegas'. Her role in the low-budget independent film Junebug (2005) (which was shot in 21 days) got her real attention, including an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress as well as other awards. The following year, her ability to look like a wide-eyed Disney animated heroine helped her to be chosen from about 300 actresses auditioning for the role of Giselle in the animated/live-action feature film Enchanted (2007). Her vivacious yet innocent portrayal allowed her to use her singing and dancing talents, and garnered her a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress. Adams next appeared in the major production Charlie Wilson's War (2007), and in the independent film Sunshine Cleaning (2008) which premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Her recent role in Doubt (2008/I) secured her with her second Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

The success of Enchanted increased Adams' media exposure during the 2007–08 film awards season. At the 80th Academy Awards ceremony, she performed "Happy Working Song", one of the nominated songs from Enchanted, live on stage. "That's How You Know", originally performed by Adams in the film, was sung by Kristin Chenoweth at the ceremony. In an interview, Adams remarked that the song was "perfect" for Chenoweth since Chenoweth "was a huge inspiration for how [she] approached Giselle".

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."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", 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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