Biography Amy Adams [] Actress

Amy Lou Adams was born August 20, 1974 to her American parents, Kathryn and Richard Adams, in Aviano, Pordenone, Italy. During the time her father was a US serviceman stationed in the country. The Adams family moved to Castle Rock, Colorado when she was very little. Amy is the middle child of seven. “There’s a lot of stuff about not getting enough attention, but the truth is, with seven kids, no one’s getting enough of anything,” she says. “It was like Lord of the Flies. We were all close in age, all very high energy.” Amy grew up in a very creative family. Her father was a singer performing in nightclubs, restaurants and officers’ clubs. “He did covers of doo-wop songs from the 1950s, some 1960s music. He played the guitar and had a keyboard that he played with his feet. He’d wear sparkly socks and I thought he was the coolest guy ever.” The Adams family also used to regularly stage homegrown theatrical productions from Richard’s scripts. Her parents were Mormons, and they brought their children up within the faith until Amy was 12, when they separated and left the church. “I can’t speak for everybody,” she says of her religious upbringing. “But I know it instilled in me a value system I still hold true. The basic ‘Do unto others…’ That was what was hammered into me. And love.”
Throughout high school, Adams sang with the school choir, trained in ballet at the David Taylor Dance Company, was active in regional theater and focused on art and sculpture. Art teacher Larry Alexander said Amy “had the quiet intensity of a perfectionist.” She belonged to something called “humanities,” which was a theater hot spot. Amy never really belonged to any one group in high school, though. “I wanted to but I sort of fell through the cracks. It’s not that anyone was mean to me; I just think that for the most part people were indifferent, and sometimes that hurts worse. You know, ‘She’s nice enough but…’ And I didn’t have time to do much of anything outside of school because of ballet.”

Young Amy was also a promising athlete, an area in which her parents encouraged her so she could win a college scholarship. “There was not enough money to put all the kids through school,” she says. “They were a little disappointed when I stopped doing athletics to dance.” Her ambition was to be a ballerina. Throughout her high school years, “which didn’t hold a lot for me socially or academically”, she would try to scrape a C average that would permit her to continue training as an apprentice at the David Taylor Dance Company. At 18, however, Adams came to the realization that “I am never going to be that good, no matter how hard I work. I got into musical theater, which was much better suited to my personality. It was like, ‘OK, this fits.'” Her mother knew Amy was going to be a star when she was rushed into service by Boulder’s Dinner theater for A Chorus Line after another actor was injured. “She learned all the songs and dances by video,” Kathryn Adams said. “When she went on stage, she hadn’t had any time with the rest of the cast, and she was phenomenal.” Amy also worked at Country Dinner Playhouse in Denver.
After graduating from Douglas County High School, Amy worked as a greeter at The Gap in Atlanta (“I lived in Virginia Highlands, Atlanta. I worked at the Lenox Mall in the Gap. I wanted to work in the stockroom, but I was just too peppy. I tried, they were like ‘No, you have to be at the front of the store. You are the only person who will literally talk to everyone who comes in the store.'”) and a waitress at Hooters (“It was fine. It took care of me for a while.”) Adams moved to Minnesota’s Twin Cities in mid-1990s and she landed a job with the prestigious Chanhassen Dinner Theater – the largest dinner theater in the country. Chanhassen director Michael Brindisi says: “Let’s get down to the facts. Amy, Amy. She’s a sweetheart. I discovered her, and I want a piece of her career.” Brindisi first saw her when he was casting for Crazy for You in Denver. “She jumped right off the stage; she was just magnetic.” Amy worked at the dinner theater for a total of three years. “They were great years. I loved it,” she says. “There’s such a work ethic involved in theater that you can’t learn in LA… Working eight shows a week in the round — there is nothing like it in LA, that’s for sure.” It was while starring in the dinner theater that Adams and her undeniable charisma caught the eye of Michael Nelson, a film producer. The following year, she made her big screen debut as a goofy beauty pageant contestant in the mockudrama, Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999), which was filmed in Minnesota. The premiere of the film took Amy Adams to Los Angeles. Urged by co-star Kirstie Alley, she moved to the city of angels with her brother Eddie when she was 24-years old. “Moving to LA led me on a very different path than I had intended for myself. I think the idea of Hollywood didn’t make any sense to me. It wasn’t on my radar at all. Acting in films was like something that special people did. When I met people that were in films and realized that they were just people, it helped make it more of a reality. And having Kristie saying I could work… It’s weird, sometimes you just need a little kick in the butt.”

Name: Amy Lou Adams
Date of Birth: August 20, 1974
Place of Birth: Aviano, Pordenone, Italy
Raised in: Castle Rock, Colorado, USA
Height: 5′ 4″ (1.63 m)
Education: Graduated from Douglas County High School (Colorado)
Family: Parents Kathryn and Richard Adams, six siblings
Marital Status: Engaged to Darren Le Gallo (boyfriend since 2001)
Childen: Aviana Olea Legallo, born May 15 2010 

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