I
meet Amy Adams in a stuffy
rehearsal room in southeast Lon-
don with broken blinds and For-
mica tables. Apart from the occa-
sional snatch of song from down
the corridor where someone is
rehearsing The Lion King, it’s a long
way from her home in Beverly Hills.
The six-times Oscar-nominated actress
is rehearsing for her West End debut in
a new production of The Glass Menag-
erie by Tennessee Williams. She begins
by apologising for her “red puffy eyes”,
explaining that her husband and
12-year-old daughter had flown back to
Los Angeles that morning and it had
been “one of those days”. Tears have
clearly been shed.
Adams is a fixture in the Forbes list
of the world’s top ten highest-paid
actresses, but you wouldn’t know it if
you passed her in the street. At 47, she
looks just like any other tired working
parent trying to juggle motherhood
and a career. Her face is pale, free of
make-up and indeed any kind of cos-
metic work. Her long red hair is tied
back in a ponytail and she is wearing a
baggy, black cheesecloth dress and
comfy shoes. The lack of artifice or van-
ity is striking.
She has completed five weeks of
rehearsals on The Glass Menagerie and
is about to move to the Duke of York’s
Theatre in the West End for costume
and technical run-throughs. “I know
I’m puffy-eyed today, but it has been a
transformative experience working in
this way, digging deep into the play
with a wonderful group of actors. With
film you don’t have that. It’s a more
lonely process.”
Aware that she might sound gushing,
Adam places a hand coquettishly on
her cheek, leans her head to one side
and slips into a slow, silky Southern
drawl to deliver a line from Tennessee
Williams — “There’s so much in my
heart, I cannot describe” — then throws
back her head with a throaty chuckle.
The next hour passes in much the same
way: one moment she’s deadly serious,
the next cracking a joke, changing
accents and on a couple of occasions
breaking into song. If this is Adams hav-
ing a bad day, she is the Hollywood star
I would most like to go to the pub with.COVER STORY
THE DAY AMY
ADAMS CRIED
A speculative letter persuaded the
free-spirited star to take a harrowing role
in London theatre — but it meant saying
goodbye to her family. By Kirsty Lang
In The Glass Menagerie Adams plays
Amanda, a matriarch living with her
two adult children in a small, dingy
apartment in St Louis. She’s a faded
Southern belle from Blue Mountain,
Mississippi, who has come down in the
world after being abandoned by her
feckless charmer of a husband. It’s the
playwright’s most autobiographical
work, inspired by his histrionic mother
and mentally fragile sister. “Amanda’s a
badass woman,” Adams says with some
admiration. “She raised these children
on her own through the Great Depres-
sion, so she’s strong, but she’s also sad,
frightened and vulnerable.”sci-fi film Arrival, to a Lady Macbeth-
like political wife in Vice, to a chaotic
junkie mother in Hillbilly Elegy.
Brought up in a Mormon family of
seven children, performing was in her
blood. The whole family loves to sing
and as kids they put on little shows.
After a spell in the army, her father left
the forces to become a performer. “He
would sing with a guitar and foot-pedal
thing in pizzerias and bars and we
would go and watch.”
She was 11 when her parents decided
to leave the church because “it wasn’t
working for them”, but says some of
the values have stayed with her. “The
golden rule of treating others how you
would like to be treated, plus a strong
sense of community.”
When I ask Adams whether she has
drawn on her relationship with her
mother for the role of Amanda in The
Glass Menagerie, she responds with a
peal of laughter and an eye roll. “My
mother was fierce. I was a very scared
child and she really encouraged me,
but without a lot of tenderness. MyAmy is not frightened of
being grotesque and is
emotionally authentic
AMY
ADAMS
FILMS
RANKED
7
Julie & Julia (2009)
Adams’s warm,
charming turn as the
food blogger Julie
Powell contrasts like
salted caramel with
the domineering
Meryl Streep, playing
America’s original
TV cook, Julia
Child, whose
recipes Powell
tries to recreate.
Apple TV+6
Doubt (2008)
An astute
performance as
a young nun who
suspects that a
priest (Philip
Seymour
Hoffman) has
abused a black
student earned
Adams her
second Oscar
nomination.
Buy on
Amazon5
Enchanted (2007)
In Disney’s musical about a
princess banished to New York
City, Adams sings, dances
and brings emotional
weight to an otherwise
two-dimensional role.
A sequel is out in
November.
Disney+Adams began her career as a dancer
in dinner-time theatre in the “fly-over
states” of Colorado and Minnesota.
Audiences are served a meal and watch
shows from their table. In one theatre
the performers waited tables before
going on stage. “I was a terrible wait-
ress. I couldn’t keep track of people’s
orders. I think I’d be better at it now,”
she says wistfully. She started out want-
ing to sing or dance, but regional thea-
tre gave her a taste for acting. She
moved to Los Angeles to try her luck,
signed up for acting classes and never
looked back.
Her breakthrough came in 2005,
playing a doe-eyed young Southern
wife in the comedy-drama Junebug, for
which she got her first Oscar nomina-
tion. She beat 300 other actresses to
play the fairytale princess in the Disney
comedy Enchanted. Adams describes
this phase of her career as “my inno-
cent period” before variety became her
watchword, with parts ranging from
the vampish con artist in American Hus-
tle to a professor of linguistics in theCatch her if you can Amy Adams is in
the West End in London until August6 29 May 2022