Amy Adams Movies: Top 10 Roles from ‘Junebug’ to ‘Big Eyes’

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Big Eyes (2014)

Big Eyes (2014)
Her (2013)
American Hustle (2013)
The Master (2012)
The Fighter (2010)
Julie and Julia (2009)
Doubt (2008)
Charlie Wilson’s War (2007)
Enchanted (2007)
Junebug (2005)

BIG EYES (2014) Director: Tim Burton. Writers: Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski. Starring Amy Adams, Christoph Waltz.
Tim Burton’s biographical film of the career of artist Margaret Keane brought Adams her second Golden Globe Award for Best Comedy Actress. As the creator of the phenomenally popular Big Eyes series of paintings in the 1950s and ’60s, Adams plays Keane as a talented artist but very much a woman of the period, so when her underhanded husband said that he wanted to be in charge of distributing her work, Margaret acquiesced. However, when she learned that he was taking credit for being the artist as well, that just would not do. Suddenly, out came the firebrand that we know is inside Adams, and revenge (and a Globe) came her way.

HER (2013) Writer/Director: Spike Jonze. Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Scarlett Johanson.
Arguably, one of Adams’ most unusual roles was in Spike Jonze’s Oscar-wining futuristic fantasy “Her,” where she played Amy, an ex-girlfriend of dweeby Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) who is beginning a relationship with a talking artificial-intelligence operating system (an OS voiced by Scarlett Johansson). Though exes, Theodore and the married Amy have remained good friends, but Amy confesses she she is divorcing her domineering husband and has now drawn closer to her husband’s female OS. Faced with Jonze’s imaginative story, all three performers are working here without a net, and Adams in particular declines to take the easy way out with a standard girlfriend performance. Her Amy is anything but.

AMERICAN HUSTLE (2013) Director: David O. Russell. Writers: David O. Russell & Eric Warren Singer. Starring Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams, Jennifer Lawrence, Jeremy Renner.
Of all of the favorite Amy Adams films on this list, “American Hustle” looked like it was the most fun to film. Those clothes, that hair, those accents and that David O. Russell slightly-cracked take on the very serious 1970s FBI sting operation called ABSCAM that Russell made downright wacky. Arguably, the biggest surprise in the cast was Adams, who completely let loose as glamorous con artist Sydney Prosser, whose latest scam is posing as the dignified British aristocrat “Lady Edith Greensly.” Adams’ phony British demeanor and upper-crust accent was an absolute hoot, earning her another Best Actress Oscar nomination, as well as the first of her two Golden Globe wins as Best Comedy Actress.

THE MASTER (2012) Writer/Director: Paul Thomas Anderson. Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Anderson, Amy Adams.
If her earlier performances in “Enchanted” and “Julie & Julia” established for Adams the image of being the girl-next-door, writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson skillfully subverted that image in this tale of a 1950s religious movement titled “The Cause,” led by charismatic “master” Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and his wife Peggy (Adams), who uses her welcome personality to bring in more followers to “The Cause.” When drifter Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) is taken under her husband’s wing, though, Peggy smells trouble and, turning steely, orders Freddie to mend his ways or leave “The Cause.” This very different role for Adams brought her Oscar and Golden Globes nominations for Best Supporting Actress.

THE FIGHTER (2010) Director: David O. Russell. Writers: Paul Tamasy & Eric Johnson and Scott Silver. Starring Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Melissa Leo.
Adams boldly went for another image change in this David O. Russell drama about a real-life undercard boxer Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg), who is being trained by his crack-addicted brother Dicky (Christian Bale). Adams portrays Charlene, a local who, after dropping out of college and becoming a bartender in the working class Massachusetts town of Lowell, meets Micky and quickly sees how his mother and brother are exploiting him. Clearly, the Boston-accented Charlene was the first truly sexy role that Adams ever played, and for her performance, she earned nominations for Best Supporting Actress from both the Oscars and the Golden Globes.

JULIE AND JULIA (2009) Writer/Director: Nora Efron. Starring Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stanley Tucci, Chris Messina.
Adams continued her successful partnership with Meryl Streep in this film by Nora Ephron, which is based on the autobiography of master chef Julia Child (Streep) and a blog written by New York home cook Julie Powell (Adams) who set out to cook every one of the 524 recipes in Child’s landmark cookbook, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” Ephron structured the film to cross-cut Child’s story of attending Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris in the 1950s with Powell’s quest to conquer Child’s cookbook shortly after 9/11 in New York. While Streep’s section garnered most of the film’s critical attention, Adams gives a delightful performance as the aspiring cook in a film whose tones are closer to the light airiness of one of Child’s souffles than with the dark complexity of her beef bourguignon.

DOUBT (2008) Writer/Director: John Patrick Shanley, based on his play. Starring Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Viola Davis.
In “Doubt,” directed and written by John Patrick Shanley, based his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Adams portrays Sister James, a young nun who teaches in a parish school in the Bronx in 1964. After the church’s Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) preaches a sermon about the value of having doubt, Sister James notices that he has developed a close relationship with an altar boy (the only black student in the school). She brings it to the attention of the school’s principal, the autocratic Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep), who has no doubt that something untoward is going on. “Doubt” marked a major dramatic step up in class for Adams as she fits right in with an ensemble of brilliant actors. Her performance as Sister James earned her Best Supporting Actress nominations for both the Oscars & Golden Globes.

CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR (2007) Director: Mike Nichols. Writer: Aaron Sorkin. Starring Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams.
Though Adams’ part in “Charlie Wilson’s War” is relatively small, the film could be considered Adams’ breakthrough in working with genuine A-list talent. With Oscar-winning director Mike Nichols, Emmy-winning writer Aaron Sorkin, and Oscar-winning co-stars Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman by her side, Adams’ role as Hanks’ intrepid “Gal Friday” Bonnie Bach brought her to Hollywood’s attention. (It also probably helped that Bonnie was given some of the film’s juiciest dialogue by Sorkin, who is famed for writing strong, smart female characters.) With “Charlie Wilson’s War,” Adams definitely landed on the film industry’s radar.

ENCHANTED (2007) Director: Kevin Lima. Writer: Bill Kelly. Starring Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey, James Marsden, Susan Sarandon.
The role of an innocent princess in a live-action/animated Disney musical fantasy would seem to be an unlikely path for an actor’s first-time nomination as Best Comedy Actress at the Golden Globes, but Adams carried it off with skill and style. As Giselle, an archetypal Disney princess, Adams’ performance actually begins as an animated figure in a magical kingdom when she then suddenly finds herself as a live-action princess climbing out of a manhole in contemporary New York City. Though puzzled and disoriented in this strange new land, Giselle never loses her sunniness and optimism, and Adams never overplays it or allows Giselle to appear foolish, which would have certainly lost the audience’s faith in her. The success of “Enchanted,” both critically and at the box-office, appeared to help cement Adams’ status as a viable new leading lady.

JUNEBUG (2005) Director: Phil Morrison. Writer: Angus MacLachlan. Starring Embeth Davidtz, Amy Adams, Benjamin McKenzie.
Adams first came to the public’s attention through this small independent film released early in the summer of 2005, far away from the hoopla of awards season at the end of the year. But somehow Adams’ performance as a young wife in a small North Carolina town who hopes to save her troubled marriage by getting pregnant lingered in critics’ memories throughout the entire back-half of the year. Many cited the mixture of sweetness and desperation that Adams brought to the character that was thought by critics to be absolutely refreshing. So that by year’s end, critics group after critics group named this little-known performer as the year’s Best Supporting Actress. Then came the big one with her first Academy Award nomination, and the career of Amy Adams was launched.

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