INTERVIEW
“Denis [Villeneuve, the director] is a huge reason I was attracted to this,” reveals Amy, who had aspirations of becoming a ballerina before turning to musical theatre.
“He really wanted to tell it as an intimate story of this woman, it just happens to be placed in this amazing sci-fi universe.”
Arrival is far from your usual popcorn alien fare. It explores the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the idea that the language you speak determines how you perceive the world and the thoughts you have.
The shoot had a profound effect on Amy, who met a linguist in preparation.
“My character studies the anthropological significance of language and culture, how people speak to one another, and how languages originate. I did a lot of reading, and realised I wouldn’t be a good linguist,” she says with a laugh, “but I found it fascinating.”
She also learned from watching her own daughter interact with other children.
“I’ve brought Aviana to several different countries for work and watching her and other kids who cannot speak the same language,
4THE FIGHTER (2010)
ANOTHER gritty role, another Oscar nod as Amy plays the girlfriend of a journeyman boxer who helps him regain confidence and form after his career is ruined by his mother (Melissa Leo) and crack-addict brother (Christian Bale).
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but who end up communicating; you start to learn communication and language are based on so much more than the words we speak.”
Denis, who has directed movies such as Prisoners and Sicario, explained his reasons for choosing Amy as the film’s protagonist.
“She brought a lot of humanity and a beautiful vulnerability to her character,” says the film-maker.
It’s a sentiment shared by Tom Ford, the fashion designer and director who cast her as his lead, Susan Morrow, in Nocturnal Animals.
“Amy has a spectacular ability to telegraph emotion without dialogue, but with just her face and soulful eyes,” observes Tom.
He wanted the character to be sympathetic, because in Tom’s own words, “it would be easy to hate her”.
On the surface, Susan looks like she has it all. In truth, she’s in a loveless marriage and feels disenchanted by her lavish existence.
One day, she’s sent a book written by her ex-husband, Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal), which he’s dedicated to her.
It’s a brutal story of what happens to a man, Tony (also played by Gyllenhaal), when he and his family
Master (2012) AMY plays the wife of a cult leader (allegedly based on Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and played by Philip Seymour Hoffman), whose latest acolyte (Joaquin Phoeinix) destabilises the movement he has created.
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are terrorised by a gang.
The drama switches between Susan’s current life, flashbacks to her past relationship with Edward and the story Edward has written.
Amy admits she was intrigued when she heard Tom, who directed 2009’s A Single Man to great acclaim, wanted to cast her.
“I really wanted to hear Tom’s perspective and how he intended to tell the story, because it was a beautiful script, but there’s a lot of going back and forth between past and present,” she says.
“When I spoke to him, he had such a wonderful way about him and such a personal relationship with the story, I was like, ‘Yes, I want to be a part of this’.”
The movie invites people to ruminate on how decisions made in youth have a lasting impact.
“I have a lot of regret over people I may have hurt,” says Amy.
“Situations I maybe didn’t handle well. It also helped remind me about hanging onto the things that are valuable to you now, even if fear gets in the way of trusting those things.”
In 2014, emails were leaked as part of the Sony hacking scandal, which revealed that Adams and Jennifer Lawrence were paid less than their male American Hustle co-stars. It understandably caused lengthy debate.
Amy didn’t react publicly at the time, but has since revealed she knew she was being paid less and it was her decision to appear in the movie anyway.
“You have to decide if it’s worth it for you. It doesn’t mean I liked it,” she told GQ earlier this year.
Today, Amy says, “[the issue] is not about pay, it’s about treatment and what we allow, and what we’ve been trained to allow.
“That’s that thing I wish I had a stronger voice about [when I was younger]. If we’re treated differently, then the pay will follow.” Nocturnal Animals and Arrival are both in cinemas now. Trouble With The Curve (2012) A FABULOUSLY grizzled Clint Eastwood is an old-school baseball scout on the verge of being put out to pasture. When his eyes start to fail, his estranged daughter Amy grudgingly joins him on the road to help assess a prospect.
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Hustle (2013) REUNITED with director David O Russell (The Fighter), Amy plays beautiful con-woman Sydney Prosser, who is forced to run a sting operation for the FBI with her partner Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale).