Amy Adams: 'I'm always happy for whoever wins'
Her role as the painter Margaret Keane in Tim Burton's Big Eyes has put her in the frame for her first Oscar. But having been nominated five times before, Adams intends to keep the awards frenzy in perspective
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Amy Adams Photo: Cliff Watts
8:00AM GMT 20 Dec 2014
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Amy Adams’s hands are trembling. Fresh from a morning hike with her fiancé,
the actor and artist Darren Le Gallo, she needs sustenance and she needs it
now. ‘Two eggs, scrambled, with a side of potatoes and tomatoes,’ she
machine-guns off to our waiter. ‘And keep the coffee coming.’ Still in her
beanie hat and hiking gear, layers of winter wool swamping her tiny 5ft 4in
frame, the five-time Oscar nominee passes unnoticed by every diner in the
Beverly Hills cafe in which we meet.
Were any one of them to give Adams a second glance they might identify that
neat, upturned nose as belonging to the wise-cracking would-be princess from
Enchanted,
or recognise Sydney Prosser – the glamazonian 1970s con artist she played in
American
Hustle – in those cornflower-blue eyes.
Then again they might not know who this woman is if they stared her square in
the face: Adams’s ability to blend into a role is unparalleled. Just when
Hollywood had her pigeonholed as its favourite new naif, she shook it up
playing a gritty Irish-American bartender who takes on Mark Wahlberg’s boxer
in The Fighter, an imperious Lady Macbeth-style wife in The
Master, and an open-minded divorcee in the sci-fi romance Her.
Now she is confounding expectations again with a beautifully underplayed
depiction of Margaret Keane, whose paintings of wide-eyed children were a
1960s sensation, in Tim
Burton’s Big Eyes. It has already won her a Golden
Globe nomination. There is no perfect Amy Adams role, it
seems, until she plays it.
‘The most amazing thing happened last year,’ Adams, 40, tells me, once
fortified by a few brisk gulps of coffee. ‘I was walking through Central
Park when I came upon this doll convention with hundreds of dolls. “Oh my
gosh,” I thought, “they all look like Big Eyes.” So I walked over and these
women started shrieking, “You’re Amy Adams! You’re playing Margaret Keane!
These dolls are inspired by her.” ’
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Playing Keane – whose husband, Walter, for a decade passed off her Big Eye
paintings as his own – has heightened Adams’s interest in art. ‘Now Darren
will take me to these underground art shows and exhibitions, and you can see
how her influence lives on.’ She hasn’t yet heard Keane’s reaction to the
film, and when I read to her what the 87-year-old painter told a newspaper
in October – ‘It was really traumatic. Christoph Waltz looks like Walter,
sounds like him, acts like him. And to see Amy going through what I went
through… It’s very accurate’ – Adams looks relieved. ‘That’s really what you
want when you’re playing someone. Not to traumatise them,’ she adds with a
prettily lopsided smile, ‘but to be accurate.’
Walter Keane may have been a drinker and a womaniser who couldn’t paint to save his life, but he was also, by all accounts, a charmer. When Margaret first met Walter at a San Francisco art exhibition in 1955, the divorced single mother fell for him hard. By the time she realised that he was taking credit for her paintings, they were already married and Walter insisted that in order to avoid lawsuits and capitalise on ‘their’ success the lie had to continue.
Amy Adams as the artist Margaret Keane, opposite Christoph Waltz as her husband, Walter, in Tim Burton's Big Eyes. Walter took the credit for her pictures of saucer-eyed children for a decade
‘What happened is still very alive within Margaret today,’ explains Adams, who spent time with Keane when researching the role. ‘She still has a lot of feelings about it. But she doesn’t come across as though she was a victim. Rather than say, “I don’t know how that happened to me,” she says, “I don’t know how I let that happen and allowed it to continue.” ’
For 10 years Margaret Keane was trapped in a gilded cage, churning out images that by the 1960s were selling by the millions as prints and postcards, while celebrities such as Natalie Wood, Joan Crawford, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were buying the originals. ‘Margaret has her own justifications; she was scared about the consequences and about losing her daughter,’ Adams says. ‘And it was a different era. If you read the literature or magazines of that time, the way that women speak or are spoken about is so different.’
Because Margaret does eventually triumph – she divorced Walter and won $4 million in damages in court (none of which she ever saw, since Walter had drunk away the fortune), US Vogue is calling the biopic ‘a late bloomer feminist’s tale’. Adams looks unsure of that description. ‘It was happening right at the beginning of the feminist movement but I don’t think that was how Margaret saw it. She was speaking out for truth because she’s very devout and religious and just couldn’t live with the lies. It was ruining her soul and I totally understand that. If I have to live with any kind of deception, it eats away at me. It’s easy for some people, like my character in American Hustle. But I felt gross playing Sydney – literally sick.’
Adams with Jennifer Lawrence in American Hustle (2013)
Adams shares a pureness and a reticence with her Big Eyes character that comes across through the delicacy of her pale features and the haltingness of her movements. Without make-up, and still pink-nosed from her hike, she looks like the outdoorsy Colorado schoolgirl she once was.
One of seven children, Adams was raised a Mormon until the age of 12, when her parents divorced and left the Church. ‘It instilled a certain work ethic in me,’ she says. ‘Everybody was always expected to pitch in and help around the house.’ There’s a glass-half-full legacy too. ‘My aunt always used to say, “A happy day keeps the blues away,” and I loved her for that. I read something recently about how the way we greet our children in the morning dictates so much of their self-worth during the day, and of course it can be hard if you’re up early and tired, but I try to put a smile on and be cheery with my daughter [four-year-old Aviana]. Non-morning people would probably find that really annoying,’ she laughs.
Adams plays a fairytale princess stranded in modern-day New York in Enchanted (2007) PHOTO: Disney Enterprises Inc
When Adams’s early dreams of becoming a ballerina were thwarted (‘I wasn’t very good – I mean I was fine, but you can’t really be fine’) she turned her attentions to musical theatre, and spent the next seven years singing and dancing in dinner-theatre productions from Colorado to Atlanta, Georgia. ‘I never thought that I’d be in films,’ she says. ‘I used to daydream about the parts I would play in musicals.’
When she heard that auditions were being held locally for the 1999 beauty pageant satire Drop Dead Gorgeous, Adams thought it was worth a try. Her portrayal of a libidinous cheerleader won her enough plaudits to prompt a move to LA that year. But what should have been an exciting time is remembered by Adams as a dark period.
‘It took me a couple of years to adjust,’ she says. ‘Jessica Chastain and I would turn up to the same auditions as the token “pale-skinned girls” and there was a lot of “We just decided to go in a different direction.” I was “too young” or “too old” and always second place.’ One memory prompts a smile. ‘I had to wear a bikini to audition for this one film, Tomcats, and that was when I decided maybe I’m not going to play pretty girls, maybe I’ll leave those roles to girls who actually look good in a bikini.’
As an actress who didn’t ‘make it’ until her 30s, those bad moments remain vivid in her memory. To this day she and Le Gallo still talk about one in particular, ‘when my agent at the time had said something really mean and I was just lying in the bathtub crying and saying, “What if there really is no place for me?” ’
Does she ever wish she had had more success in her 20s? ‘Gosh, I would have been a disaster,’ she says. ‘I was that strange mix of confident and insecure at the same time, which I think is a bit dangerous. I think I was a little too easily swayed by people. And a little too eager to please.’
Which is not to say that Adams isn’t proud of her early work, particularly Steven Spielberg’s 2002 biopic Catch Me If You Can, in which she plays a guileless ex-stripper turned nurse who falls for Leonardo DiCaprio’s con man. ‘Catch Me If You Can was pivotal because I felt really comfortable acting alongside Tom Hanks and Leo – and it was encouraging to know that I was able to accomplish what I wanted to around these people who were giants to me. I was kind of fearless back then.’
Curiously, the fear came later for Adams, once she had been feted by Hollywood for her performances in Catch Me If You Can and the excellent 2005 low-budget family drama Junebug. ‘After Enchanted [in 2007, in which she played a fairytale princess stranded in modern-day New York], when people started paying attention to me, I went through a period where I became very self-conscious. There was a moment when I was going into things not exuding the kind of confidence or certainty in my work that I should have had.’
Adams in the low-budget family drama Junebug (2005), for which she won her first Oscar nomination
The place she had given up on finding for herself all those years ago in the bathtub had turned out to be a very public one – and that wasn’t an easy fit for Adams. ‘I’m not a bold person,’ she says. ‘It’s just not my calling.’ Today she deals with the trappings of her success with as much grace as she can muster. ‘Eventually you have to have a sense of humour about it all. So I’ll try to enjoy red carpets as their own separate thing and when it’s all over go off and eat my burrito.’
Has being a mother deepened her professional abilities? ‘It has definitely changed the way that I work,’ she says. ‘Something about motherhood allows me to be really dedicated when I’m working because I know that I have something outside of it. So in the best circumstances it’s fun and enlightening and then I go back to my family life and it’s so… separate. I like that. It was hard at first though,’ she adds. ‘I couldn’t do it. Waking up early and then trying to work…’
Adams was pregnant with Aviana when she was playing the Boston barmaid Charlene in The Fighter in 2010, and brought her newborn on to the set of The Muppets the following year. A glut of filming ensued: Walter Salles’s On the Road, Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master and Robert Lorenz’s The Trouble with the Curve. Did she ever suffer from working mum’s guilt? ‘Oh yeah,’ she admits. ‘I didn’t do well the first year. I was never diagnosed but I probably had a bit of baby blues…’ Post-natal depression? ‘Yeah,’ she nods. ‘It’s funny because you don’t realise it in the moment. And then looking back now… I mean it wasn’t severe, but I was definitely in a funk that I couldn’t pull myself out of for about a year.’
So did she talk to someone about it or come out of it of her own accord? ‘Both,’ she says. ‘I read a lot of books and I still do. I don’t necessarily agree with everything they say, but sometimes they will give you the spark of an idea that will help you change and do something differently. I’m not concerned about what people think about me, or being perfect, but I would like to just do better.’
Although she recently spoke out about having a ‘meltdown’ on turning 40, Adams says motherhood has prompted many more epiphanies than that particular milestone. ‘It’s funny because I spoke about it in a humorous way and the next thing I know my dad’s calling me and saying, “You can’t cope with turning 40?” I explained that it was just me saying, “Wow – I am not a grown-up. What am I doing?” ’
Producing – Adams is working on an adaptation of Steve Martin’s novella Object of Beauty – may help her feel ‘as grown up as Reese Witherspoon’, for whom she has a lot of respect. ‘But really what I care about is what kind of a model I want to be for Aviana. I won’t let things affect me the way they used to. So am I really going to get upset that I gained 3lb and they have to let my dress out? No. Let it out. No big deal.’
'I won't let things affect me the way they used to. So am I really going to get upset that I gained 3lb and they have to let my dress out? No. Let it out. No big deal' PHOTO: Cliff Watts/Trunk Archive
Although she and Le Gallo got together on Warner Loughlin’s 2006 short film Pennies, and were engaged two years later, they haven’t yet set a wedding date and right now Adams feels more pressurised by the issue of whether or not to have another child. ‘I was recently told that I have to decide soon,’ she sighs. ‘And it’s true. You can’t put moisturiser on your ovaries to keep them young. Your ovaries and your hands,’ she chuckles. ‘They're the real giveaway, aren’t they? So I know that I don’t have all the time in the world to make that decision and that does weigh on me, but I’m happy now.’
It is perhaps in order to maintain her current serenity that Adams has blocked out any talk of the Academy Awards, for which Big Eyes is already being touted as a contender in several important categories, including that of best actress for Adams. ‘I’ve made a pledge to myself that I’m not going to read anything or know what’s going on,’ she maintains, ‘which has been good. It’s not like I can say, “I never want to win an Oscar,” and it would be nice, so that people stop wondering if I ever will. But I’m always happy for whoever wins. I know people don’t believe me, and that’s OK,’ she adds, laughing. ‘I’m sorry for their bitter souls.’
The thing about Adams is that I do believe her. Just as I believe that over the next few months that she is taking off Adams really is going to dedicate herself to ‘taking my daughter to school and being “the class mom” ’. ‘I’ve been back and forth so much and I feel like I’ve missed so much,’ she says by way of explanation. ‘Plus there’s something about being able to tell my daughter with absolute certainty that I will be there; about knowing that I won't let her down.’
Big Eyes is out on December 26
Walter Keane may have been a drinker and a womaniser who couldn’t paint to save his life, but he was also, by all accounts, a charmer. When Margaret first met Walter at a San Francisco art exhibition in 1955, the divorced single mother fell for him hard. By the time she realised that he was taking credit for her paintings, they were already married and Walter insisted that in order to avoid lawsuits and capitalise on ‘their’ success the lie had to continue.
Amy Adams as the artist Margaret Keane, opposite Christoph Waltz as her husband, Walter, in Tim Burton's Big Eyes. Walter took the credit for her pictures of saucer-eyed children for a decade
‘What happened is still very alive within Margaret today,’ explains Adams, who spent time with Keane when researching the role. ‘She still has a lot of feelings about it. But she doesn’t come across as though she was a victim. Rather than say, “I don’t know how that happened to me,” she says, “I don’t know how I let that happen and allowed it to continue.” ’
For 10 years Margaret Keane was trapped in a gilded cage, churning out images that by the 1960s were selling by the millions as prints and postcards, while celebrities such as Natalie Wood, Joan Crawford, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were buying the originals. ‘Margaret has her own justifications; she was scared about the consequences and about losing her daughter,’ Adams says. ‘And it was a different era. If you read the literature or magazines of that time, the way that women speak or are spoken about is so different.’
Because Margaret does eventually triumph – she divorced Walter and won $4 million in damages in court (none of which she ever saw, since Walter had drunk away the fortune), US Vogue is calling the biopic ‘a late bloomer feminist’s tale’. Adams looks unsure of that description. ‘It was happening right at the beginning of the feminist movement but I don’t think that was how Margaret saw it. She was speaking out for truth because she’s very devout and religious and just couldn’t live with the lies. It was ruining her soul and I totally understand that. If I have to live with any kind of deception, it eats away at me. It’s easy for some people, like my character in American Hustle. But I felt gross playing Sydney – literally sick.’
Adams with Jennifer Lawrence in American Hustle (2013)
Adams shares a pureness and a reticence with her Big Eyes character that comes across through the delicacy of her pale features and the haltingness of her movements. Without make-up, and still pink-nosed from her hike, she looks like the outdoorsy Colorado schoolgirl she once was.
One of seven children, Adams was raised a Mormon until the age of 12, when her parents divorced and left the Church. ‘It instilled a certain work ethic in me,’ she says. ‘Everybody was always expected to pitch in and help around the house.’ There’s a glass-half-full legacy too. ‘My aunt always used to say, “A happy day keeps the blues away,” and I loved her for that. I read something recently about how the way we greet our children in the morning dictates so much of their self-worth during the day, and of course it can be hard if you’re up early and tired, but I try to put a smile on and be cheery with my daughter [four-year-old Aviana]. Non-morning people would probably find that really annoying,’ she laughs.
Adams plays a fairytale princess stranded in modern-day New York in Enchanted (2007) PHOTO: Disney Enterprises Inc
When Adams’s early dreams of becoming a ballerina were thwarted (‘I wasn’t very good – I mean I was fine, but you can’t really be fine’) she turned her attentions to musical theatre, and spent the next seven years singing and dancing in dinner-theatre productions from Colorado to Atlanta, Georgia. ‘I never thought that I’d be in films,’ she says. ‘I used to daydream about the parts I would play in musicals.’
When she heard that auditions were being held locally for the 1999 beauty pageant satire Drop Dead Gorgeous, Adams thought it was worth a try. Her portrayal of a libidinous cheerleader won her enough plaudits to prompt a move to LA that year. But what should have been an exciting time is remembered by Adams as a dark period.
‘It took me a couple of years to adjust,’ she says. ‘Jessica Chastain and I would turn up to the same auditions as the token “pale-skinned girls” and there was a lot of “We just decided to go in a different direction.” I was “too young” or “too old” and always second place.’ One memory prompts a smile. ‘I had to wear a bikini to audition for this one film, Tomcats, and that was when I decided maybe I’m not going to play pretty girls, maybe I’ll leave those roles to girls who actually look good in a bikini.’
As an actress who didn’t ‘make it’ until her 30s, those bad moments remain vivid in her memory. To this day she and Le Gallo still talk about one in particular, ‘when my agent at the time had said something really mean and I was just lying in the bathtub crying and saying, “What if there really is no place for me?” ’
Does she ever wish she had had more success in her 20s? ‘Gosh, I would have been a disaster,’ she says. ‘I was that strange mix of confident and insecure at the same time, which I think is a bit dangerous. I think I was a little too easily swayed by people. And a little too eager to please.’
Which is not to say that Adams isn’t proud of her early work, particularly Steven Spielberg’s 2002 biopic Catch Me If You Can, in which she plays a guileless ex-stripper turned nurse who falls for Leonardo DiCaprio’s con man. ‘Catch Me If You Can was pivotal because I felt really comfortable acting alongside Tom Hanks and Leo – and it was encouraging to know that I was able to accomplish what I wanted to around these people who were giants to me. I was kind of fearless back then.’
Curiously, the fear came later for Adams, once she had been feted by Hollywood for her performances in Catch Me If You Can and the excellent 2005 low-budget family drama Junebug. ‘After Enchanted [in 2007, in which she played a fairytale princess stranded in modern-day New York], when people started paying attention to me, I went through a period where I became very self-conscious. There was a moment when I was going into things not exuding the kind of confidence or certainty in my work that I should have had.’
Adams in the low-budget family drama Junebug (2005), for which she won her first Oscar nomination
The place she had given up on finding for herself all those years ago in the bathtub had turned out to be a very public one – and that wasn’t an easy fit for Adams. ‘I’m not a bold person,’ she says. ‘It’s just not my calling.’ Today she deals with the trappings of her success with as much grace as she can muster. ‘Eventually you have to have a sense of humour about it all. So I’ll try to enjoy red carpets as their own separate thing and when it’s all over go off and eat my burrito.’
Has being a mother deepened her professional abilities? ‘It has definitely changed the way that I work,’ she says. ‘Something about motherhood allows me to be really dedicated when I’m working because I know that I have something outside of it. So in the best circumstances it’s fun and enlightening and then I go back to my family life and it’s so… separate. I like that. It was hard at first though,’ she adds. ‘I couldn’t do it. Waking up early and then trying to work…’
Adams was pregnant with Aviana when she was playing the Boston barmaid Charlene in The Fighter in 2010, and brought her newborn on to the set of The Muppets the following year. A glut of filming ensued: Walter Salles’s On the Road, Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master and Robert Lorenz’s The Trouble with the Curve. Did she ever suffer from working mum’s guilt? ‘Oh yeah,’ she admits. ‘I didn’t do well the first year. I was never diagnosed but I probably had a bit of baby blues…’ Post-natal depression? ‘Yeah,’ she nods. ‘It’s funny because you don’t realise it in the moment. And then looking back now… I mean it wasn’t severe, but I was definitely in a funk that I couldn’t pull myself out of for about a year.’
So did she talk to someone about it or come out of it of her own accord? ‘Both,’ she says. ‘I read a lot of books and I still do. I don’t necessarily agree with everything they say, but sometimes they will give you the spark of an idea that will help you change and do something differently. I’m not concerned about what people think about me, or being perfect, but I would like to just do better.’
Although she recently spoke out about having a ‘meltdown’ on turning 40, Adams says motherhood has prompted many more epiphanies than that particular milestone. ‘It’s funny because I spoke about it in a humorous way and the next thing I know my dad’s calling me and saying, “You can’t cope with turning 40?” I explained that it was just me saying, “Wow – I am not a grown-up. What am I doing?” ’
Producing – Adams is working on an adaptation of Steve Martin’s novella Object of Beauty – may help her feel ‘as grown up as Reese Witherspoon’, for whom she has a lot of respect. ‘But really what I care about is what kind of a model I want to be for Aviana. I won’t let things affect me the way they used to. So am I really going to get upset that I gained 3lb and they have to let my dress out? No. Let it out. No big deal.’
'I won't let things affect me the way they used to. So am I really going to get upset that I gained 3lb and they have to let my dress out? No. Let it out. No big deal' PHOTO: Cliff Watts/Trunk Archive
Although she and Le Gallo got together on Warner Loughlin’s 2006 short film Pennies, and were engaged two years later, they haven’t yet set a wedding date and right now Adams feels more pressurised by the issue of whether or not to have another child. ‘I was recently told that I have to decide soon,’ she sighs. ‘And it’s true. You can’t put moisturiser on your ovaries to keep them young. Your ovaries and your hands,’ she chuckles. ‘They're the real giveaway, aren’t they? So I know that I don’t have all the time in the world to make that decision and that does weigh on me, but I’m happy now.’
It is perhaps in order to maintain her current serenity that Adams has blocked out any talk of the Academy Awards, for which Big Eyes is already being touted as a contender in several important categories, including that of best actress for Adams. ‘I’ve made a pledge to myself that I’m not going to read anything or know what’s going on,’ she maintains, ‘which has been good. It’s not like I can say, “I never want to win an Oscar,” and it would be nice, so that people stop wondering if I ever will. But I’m always happy for whoever wins. I know people don’t believe me, and that’s OK,’ she adds, laughing. ‘I’m sorry for their bitter souls.’
The thing about Adams is that I do believe her. Just as I believe that over the next few months that she is taking off Adams really is going to dedicate herself to ‘taking my daughter to school and being “the class mom” ’. ‘I’ve been back and forth so much and I feel like I’ve missed so much,’ she says by way of explanation. ‘Plus there’s something about being able to tell my daughter with absolute certainty that I will be there; about knowing that I won't let her down.’
Big Eyes is out on December 26
