HOT SPRINGS -- Many of the pivotal moments actress Joey Lauren Adams experienced were some of her worst ones, she told Hot Springs National Park Rotary Club last week.
Adams, speaking to the club at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hot Springs on Wednesday, said one of those moments happened in seventh grade.
"For some reason in seventh grade in North Little Rock, they made every kid in the county go to this one school, so as a result, there was only one school to play football against," she said.
"So they had seven football teams within the one school, which meant they had seven cheerleading squads within one school, which meant that everybody and their dog made cheerleader."
When it came time to find out, she and her family went to the school to see which team she made.
"It wasn't a matter of will I be on a team? It was just which team would I be on," she said. "So we started looking and it was like, 'Well, I'm not a Viking, not a Cowboy. I'm not a Raider. On and on and on until it was like I didn't make cheerleader, and in North Little Rock at the time, people brought food to our house because it was truly a tragedy. It was just unfathomable. 'What is wrong with your daughter that like she can't make cheerleader?'"
She then started getting into acting, becoming president of the school's drama club, and eventually went to Australia as part of an exchange student program.
"The drama department was not so focused on musicals, and it just kind of like deepened my love for it," she said. "And I knew then that this is what I wanted to do with my life."
Adams eventually moved to California, getting a role on a TV series in the early 1990s that led to her getting bigger roles. Another pivotal moment after a late night at a bar opened her mind to writing.
"I got up the next morning, and I started writing. They say, 'Write what you know,' so I started writing about Arkansas. And it was really just to have something to get up and do that was creative, that was productive," she said.
"I wasn't happy with the roles that were out there for women, and it's like if you're going to complain about that, try and do something about that. So I was trying to write a female character that I would like."
After finishing the script, her agent felt there would be interest in making it, but after securing an investor four years later, the investor disappeared, killing the project. Adams visited Morgan Freeman's bar in Clarksville, Miss., staying at the Shack Up Inn for 40 days and nights and visiting Oxford, Miss., while she was there.
"I fell in love with the people," she said. "I fell in love with the sense of community. It's just an amazing special little town. There were a lot of writers, and it just kind of renewed my spirit, that trip."
It took another year, but Adams managed to raise enough money to produce the film, "Come Early Morning," with Ashley Judd in the lead role. The success of the film made her decide to move to Oxford, where she eventually met her husband, Brian Vilim, while they were working on a film where he was cinematographer.
The pair visited Hot Springs to celebrate her mother's 75th birthday at a house on Lake Hamilton, and they purchased a house on the lake in 2019. With the covid-19 pandemic shutting down the film and television industry, they started spending more time in the Spa City.
"It's just a lifestyle I've been doing for 34 years that I'm getting tired of," she said. "I missed my granddad's funeral. I mean, it just kind of goes on and on, and I think Brian was sort of feeling the same way. So we bought the hotel. We ended up buying the building next to it. We ended up buying a house downtown and moving here."
Since moving to Hot Springs in 2022, the pair filmed a Lifetime movie, "Betrayed by My Bridesmaid," in downtown Hot Springs.