ON FILM: Amy Adams beams with radiant charm

By Philip Martin

Photo by Movie Studio Release

Frances McDormand (left) and Amy Adams (right) star in Bharat Nalluri's MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY

ADVERSTISMENT

NEW YORK — They couldn't keep Amy Adams in the stock room.

That's actually where she wanted to be when she worked for the Gap at Lenox Mall in Atlanta, folding and unpacking and doing the other behind-the-scenes chores necessary to the success of a retail behemoth. But she proved "too peppy."

"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,'" she says. And a star was born.

Seeing Adams on-screen, it's hard to imagine her as anything but the reigning - or next - America's sweetheart. But in the flesh, she's charming and almost alarmingly approachable.

An Academy Award nomination (for best supporting actress in 2005's Junebug) and a handful of star turns (including in last year's Enchantment) later, Adams still hasn't developed the slim "I'm-being-ever-so-cordial-but-just-know-you're-boring-me to-death" smile of Angelina Jolie or the imperial iciness of Nicole Kidman. Though she effectively channels the ghosts of glamour bombs Carole Lombard, Judy Holliday and Jean Harlow in her latest film, the faux Howard Hawks adult fantasy Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day, she looks and acts - and this is a compliment - like someone who used to be the most vivacious sales associate at the Gap.

Adams is aware of how she comes off, and it doesn't exactly please her. She says she's working on acquiring a more "professional" mien.

She hasn't got the hang of it yet. When asked about the three men vying for her character's affection in Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (opening in Little Rock today) she's initially a little cool. What does she offer about onscreen suitors Lee Pace, Mark Strong and Tom Payne? Only that they're, uh, "unique."

Come again?

"I don't know what to say," she confesses. "I just sort of feel squirrelly talking about it. Here's why - I know I have come across as a little boy crazy in past interviews, because I'm always like, 'Oh, my gosh, he's so cuute.' That's how I've been ... I sound like, you know, that actress who, like, really overly enjoys all of her male contact ...

"There is this story with Lee where Bharat [Nalluri, the director] had to ask him to leave the set because I was staring at him. Because I am a little boy crazy ... Lee had come in on a day where he wasn't working and he was just hanging out across the room. And he looked so dashing - like an old-time movie star with his long legs, lounging there in his cowboy boots, like Steve Mc-Queen. I was, like, 'Oh, wow.' And Bharat was like, 'What are you doing?' I was, like, 'I'm sorry, I wasn't listening. I was lookingat Lee. I mean look at him over there leaning.' And so Bharat walked over and told Lee he had to leave. He said, 'You're distracting Amy with your presence so you need to leave.' I was mortified, just mortified."

Divas don't get mortified - or bubbly. And while they would probably tell you how thrilled they are to be working with Frances McDormand, they wouldn't actually gush.

"She's just amazing ...," Adams says. "She just creates this wonderful environment, she's funny and free and open. The talent is unquestionable, I could go on and on about that."

But it was McDormand's "professionalism" (that word again) and "joy in the craft" that most impressed Adams.

"You can learn so much. I go in there going, 'I know that you know more than I do, and I want to learn from you.' ... She's on time, the first person on set. There's no ego involved. She's there for the work and she's 100 percent there. When I'm working with someone, I always want to be the first person on set, I don't want to keep anyone waiting. But I could never beat Frances to the set ...

"So I asked her, 'How is it that you continue to beat me to the set?' And she looked at me and said, 'I never leave.' From then on, of course, I couldn't leave the set. She doesn't leave, I don't leave."

Having made the long strange trip from the back of the Gap to bona fide movie star to the next "It" girl, how is Adams coping with success?

"I don't know," she says. "I've always equated 'It' girls with having a certain kind of sexuality that I really don't see myself as having : It's not something that I associate with myself at this time. But I've been working, which is so grounding and you don't, sort of, get a sense of the outside world when you're working, and also when you're in New York because New York is its own universe. So we'll see when I go home.

"I'm silly. I'm a silly person. I can be ridiculous, like, annoying I'm sure ... [the paparazzi] don't follow me home, they don't follow me out to dinner. They don't follow me down the street, thank goodness, because I walk out in my PJs. I have a puppy where you if don't take her out first thing in the morning - and I mean first thing in the morning - you're picking up stuff in the house."

You won't get a quote like that out of Jennifer Lopez.

pmartin@arkansasonline.com

MovieStyle, Pages 41, 46 on 03/07/2008