WHAT IS AMY ADAMS AFRAID OF?
THE ACTRESS ON FACING HER FEARS, WHY SHE’S AN ‘AGGRESSIVE HOMEBODY’ AND HER DARK ROLE IN THE NEW THRILLER THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW
Amy Adams never planned to take on so many dark, gritty roles. After all, she first became known for playing sweet and innocent characters in movies such as Junebug, Enchanted and Doubt. “I intend to do something light, but I keep being offered these beautifully complex roles,” says the actress, 46, whose later performances include well-reviewed turns in The Master, Nocturnal Animals and Sharp Objects. “I don’t know what it says about me, that I’m really attracted to the psychology of [people’s] damage,” she tells Parade during a COVID-safe Zoom from her home in Los Angeles, where she’s been quarantining with her husband, artist Darren Le Gallo, and their daughter, Aviana, 10.
Enter her next tense psychological thriller, The Woman in the Window (May 14 on Netflix). She’ll star as Anna Fox, a woman questioning her own reality as she struggles with her mental health and agoraphobia, with an intense fear of being outside her New
York City brownstone apartment. When Anna thinks she witnesses a murder while watching her new neighbors from her window, she is forced to confront the traumas of her own life. The Woman in the Window, based on the New York Times bestselling novel by A.J. Finn (the pen name of writer Daniel Malloy), also stars Julianne Moore, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Gary Oldman. Adams was hesitant, at first, to take the part. “I was not sure I wanted to dive into that dark of a place,” she says, admitting she’s had her own issues with panic and anxiety in the past. “Playing Anna taught me how far it could go. There were a lot of times where it got a little too close. I had a lot of anxiety in my 20s.”
“WORKING TOWARD HAPPINESS AND CONTENTMENT IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN WORKING TOWARD SUCCESS.”
‘GREASE’ WAS THE WORD
Adams was born in Vicenza, Italy, when her father, Richard, was stationed in the U.S. Army there. He is now retired, and her mom, Kathryn, is now a massage therapist. (They divorced when Adams was around 11.) The fourth of seven siblings, she remembers moving around a lot growing up, from one army base to another, then around the state of Colorado before settling in the town of Castle Rock.
Despite how adaptive she learned to be, “I was not a brave child,” she says. “Everything scared me.” For a long time, she refused to learn to ride a bike for fear of falling off.
And though she was a competitive gymnast for years, once she started seeing injuries happen, “I just lost all my nerve,” and she turned to ballet and its softer landings. The first time she thought about being a performer was watching John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John cavort in Grease, but she soon moved on to be inspired by more classic films like Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, and its leading lady, Kim Novak.
In lieu of college, she moved to Atlanta with her mom after her parents divorced, then to Minneapolis, supporting herself by working retail and restaurant jobs. Then she finally made the move to Hollywood.
CHASING HAPPINESS
Truly on her own for the first time, anxiety crept in again. She eventually got her big break in 2002’s Catch Me If You Can, playing the young Southern belle who captures the heart of Leonardo DiCaprio’s wily con man. But while the role brought her critical attention, it didn’t exactly launch her career.
“I was auditioning a ton, [but] I was so afraid of failure, I just kept choking and bombing,” she says. Ultimately, she changed her approach. She focused more on roles and characters—like the pregnant young wife she played in Junebug three years later. “Working toward happiness and contentment felt more important than working toward success.” As things turned out, it led to success anyway. In 2006, she received her first Academy Award nomination, for Junebug, followed by nominations for Doubt, The Fighter, The Master, American Hustle and Vice over the next 13 years. Most recently, she played Bev in the adaption of the bestseller Hillbilly Elegy, directed by Ron Howard.
But her professional triumphs didn’t put a total end to the nervousness Adams still feels sometimes about revealing herself to the world. “I love the whole idea of acting as allegory—like, you can get to know me through my work,” she says. Which is why for a long time she stayed off social media. But when the coronavirus pandemic began gaining momentum in March 2020, she opened an Instagram account and partnered with fellow actress Jennifer Garner for their @SaveWithStories page, on which their celebrity friends read children’s books to families sheltering at home. The initiative went global, raised lots of money for charity and wrapped up in November with more than 300 stories on the platform.
As for the personal page Adams started? It’s still not her thing. “I’m a mess on Instagram!” She’d much rather be just hanging out at home, living her private life with her daughter and Le Gallo—whom she met in an acting class in 2001 and married in 2015.
‘AGGRESSIVE HOMEBODY’
After all the moving around Adams did in her youth, “I like to be settled,” she says. “I’ve turned into a pretty aggressive homebody.” Of course, COVID helped her family hone their indoor skills. Aviana’s into digital art, sings and plays several musical instruments. “She does Zoom lessons and has a Zoom band, and they did a Zoom concert,” says Adams, proudly sharing footage of Avi playing drums and singing in her all-girl band, the Troublemakers.
As Adams was forced to spend her own share of time on the virtual meeting app, she was surprised to discover how much it suits her. “Because of my social anxiety, it’s easier to be more social on Zoom than I am in person,” she says. Her computer screen has allowed her to play an even bigger role in amplifying diverse voices through her production company, Bond Group Entertainment, and working with charitable organizations such as the RightWay Foundation, which helps foster kids aging out of the system find job placement and training.
This past fall, she finished filming the screen version of the Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen, due later this year, in which she’ll appear alongside Ben Platt, Julianne Moore and Kaitlyn Dever. She’s set to reprise her role as Disney princess Giselle in Disenchanted, a 10-years-later sequel to the 2007 hit Enchanted. And she will executive-produce and star in an upcoming Netflix TV series, Kings of America, playing one of three women whose lives are intertwined through a lawsuit against Walmart. She’s also developing an adaptation of the young adult novel Willa of the Wood, a book she and her daughter read last year.
After a year of quarantine, and some projects that perhaps edged a little too close to her anxieties, Adams is ready for springtime and its longer daylight hours— and more light in general. And she’s enthused about all the bright new projects she’s got lined up.
“I’m super excited,” she says. “I think that we’ve lived in the darkness. That’s why I’m talking about light so much. I’m really happy to lean into this moment.”