This week’s Comediva of the Week catches all the breaks. She’s been a princess who turned the gritty real world into something a little more like her animated one, she’s been a 1940s starlet, she’s going to be Lois Lane soon … oh, and did we forget she GETS TO DANCE WITH MUPPETS?
That’s right, Amy Adams, the redhead who is just too sweet to hate, even if she is hanging out with Kermit, Miss Piggie and Jason Segel, is our Comediva of the Week.
Before you start feeling like Amy is just a blessed being who lives to make all other comedivas jealous of her adorableness, know that Amy started her career in dinner theater. In fact, she only left because Kirstie Alley met her on Drop Dead Gorgeous and convinced Amy she needed to move to L.A. and try acting in the big leagues. It took almost seven years for Amy to get her first breakout role, Junebug, and finally get her chance at bat.
Amy was on the verge of quitting when she nailed down Junebug. But by staying brave and hanging in there, she now had the opportunity to dance with Muppets. And Jason Segel. If that’s not enough to give every comediva out there a little hope, that someday, she too will dance with Muppets, then I don’t know what could.
Amy has made her name for not being as dumb as her characters appear to be. Her best roles, like Giselle in Enchanted and Delysia Lafosse in Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, have been women who look like they can’t be trusted to find their own way home from the house across the street. There is something of a modern day Marylin Monroe in Amy — she’s the kind of bright, bubbly actress who makes her work look easy, but actually produces nuanced, delicate performances that are just as effective in drama as they are in the broadest of comedy.
How does she do it? One word. Commitment. Amy throws herself into her work with an abandon that translates into a sort of luminescence in her characters, whether she’s playing a forensic cleaner in Sunshine Cleaning or a nun in Doubt or a slightly batty princess in Enchanted.
“I have done so many embarrassing things in my career,” Amy told Ontheredcarpet.com in a recent interview. “I’m not very bashful in between ‘Action’ and ‘Cut,’ but in my own life I’m not someone who likes to draw a lot of attention to myself.”
So ladies, let’s all go out and be “not very bashful” as we go forth in our own separate comedy endeavors. If it got Amy from dinner theater to dancing with the Muppets, it’s worth a shot!
