Amy Adams on Big Eyes, American Hustle and Batman v Superman
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Version 0 of 1. Hi Amy. Good morning! Ooh, it isn’t morning where you are, is it? Well, happy new year. That’s a bit more neutral, isn’t it? Thank you. How did you spend New Year’s Eve? I was at home with my family. We rented a karaoke machine. I’m kind of a music nerd (1). My favourite this time was something my daughter brought to it. She can be quite shy about performing but she sang Katy Perry’s Roar (2). That was fun to watch. There are two Lana Del Rey songs in Big Eyes (3), but I guess that’s not great karaoke music. Oh, I don’t know. I’d try it. I’d try anything. The painter you play, Margaret Keane, had to fight to be heard because her husband Walter took the credit for her work – is that why you speak quietly for most of the film? Margaret is a person who often used her art to express her emotions, so her speaking voice was not naturally her strength. She’s shy and sweet, with a wonderful sense of humour. Playing her with that voice felt right: it was authentic and it also provided a good juxtaposition with Walter [Christoph Waltz]. Is voice always your way in to a character? In the films I’ve made with David O Russell, The Fighter and American Hustle, he had a very specific voice in mind. Coming from a musical background, voice is a good starting point for me. Is there an actor’s equivalent of the fear of the blank canvas or the blank page? For me it’s when you don’t know how to be the character. With Doubt, I got more and more overwhelmed during rehearsals with these giants (4), Meryl Streep (5) and Philip Seymour Hoffman (6), until I actually couldn’t speak. The director John Patrick Shanley said: “It’s the character that’s doing that to you. This is how she’s feeling.” I was there with these powerhouses and I was wondering why I wasn’t a powerhouse too. But the character was afraid. What did you and Keane discuss when you met? We talked over some of the situations in the script but she is in her 80s and I didn’t want to pick at a scab, so to speak. I wanted to take only what she was willing to give without interrogating her. What struck me was how fresh it still was in her mind when she spoke about it – the abuse she suffered at Walter’s hands. She didn’t realise it was abuse for a long time. She was charmed by him. She thought: “Why did he pick me?” Was it strange to be stared at by all those eyes in her paintings on set? It was! I became very familiar with them. They represent how she saw the world. Sometimes they look confused, sometimes sad. She still paints every day. It’s part of her essential being. Like another Tim Burton film, Ed Wood, Big Eyes doesn’t make any explicit statement about the quality of its subject’s work. But the critic played by Terence Stamp says it represents “an infinity of kitsch”. How do you think that felt to her? It must have been so confusing and strange to have your work celebrated and torn down at the same time but also to get neither credit nor blame, to not be able to speak up for your work in any way. I know it was hurtful when people attacked the work. I know kitsch, by definition, isn’t considered art, but I have a lot of things in my life that would be called kitsch and I love them all. Such as? Lots of carved wooden birds that you get at souvenir shops, stuff like that. Margaret gifted me one of her paintings, which was just beyond generous. How do you respond to criticism? At the beginning, it was overwhelming on both sides. It’s wonderful to have people celebrate your work but there are definitely people who don’t like what I do (7). I’ve just learned to silence the outside voices because it distracts me. It steals joy. After Catch Me If You Can, I was paralysed by the idea of people paying attention to what I did. I had to learn to stay off the internet. Are there any characters you’ve played that you wish you could go back to? I’ve just had my first experience of bringing a character back, playing Lois Lane again , and it was fun to take her on a new journey. There are occasions where I’m grateful to let the character go. That’s how I felt about Sydney in American Hustle. Oh no! That was the one I was hoping you’d say you loved. Isn’t that funny? People love her. The reaction was that she was strong and sexy, but I saw it differently. There was something so damaged about her that didn’t sit well with me playing her. It was fun making the film and Christian [Bale] is one of my all-time favourite people to work with. And Sydney is a great character. But it didn’t feel good to play her. I felt her pain in a way that was difficult to deal with. Your most memorable scene, where you are screaming euphorically in the nightclub toilet, does feel a bit twisted. Oh, there was a lot more of that kind of … Yeah, anyway, we shot a lot of scenes that didn’t make it into the film. Those showed her as being more damaged in other ways. I totally understand why they didn’t make it into the film. It got pretty dark. Big Eyes is on release. Foot notes 1. No kidding. From Enchanted to The Muppets to playing the Baker’s Wife in a Central Park production of Into the Woods, music is never far from an Amy Adams role. 2. The screenwriter John August, a regular Tim Burton collaborator (including Big Fish and Corpse Bride), wrote a blog post about the song (“The Oh Oh Ohs, which look ridiculous written down, are like little velcro loops that ensure the song sticks in your head”) and the issues he has with the lyrics (“She rhymes FIRE with FIRE”). 3. Big Eyes and I Can Fly. 4. Technically untrue. Streep is 1.68m. The late Hoffman was 1.77m. Perhaps Adams (1.63m) should have stood further away from them to make them appear smaller? 5. Adams also appeared with Streep in Julie & Julia though their characters (Streep played the chef Julia Child and Adams a food blogger, Julie Powell, who was inspired by her) occupy different eras. One enterprising viewer excised Adams entirely from the film, producing a new version, Julia, which Vanity Fair called “a delightful hour-long movie all about Julia cooking her way through Paris”. 6. Adams also starred with Hoffman in Charlie Wilson’s War and The Master. In the latter, she masturbated him over a sink. Nice. 7. Really? Pah! They’re idiots. Even when she appeared as Amelia Earhart in A Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, it was like finding a Michelin-starred chef working at KFC. 8. Adams played her in Man of Steel and has just finished shooting Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. |