page_title: Amy Adams
section_title: 1994–2004: Dinner theater and early screen appearances
hierarchical_section_title: Amy Adams / Career / 1994–2004: Dinner theater and early screen appearances
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Steven Spielberg à la Masterclass (leçon de cinéma) du 9 janvier 2012 à la Cinémathèque Française à Paris. English: Steven Spielberg during his masterclass at "La Cinémathèque Française" on January 9th, 2012 in Paris
context_page_description: Amy Lou Adams is an American actress. Known for both her comedic and dramatic performances, she has placed three times in annual rankings of the highest-paid actresses in the world. Her accolades include two Golden Globes, and nominations for six Academy Awards and seven British Academy Film Awards.
  Born in Vicenza, Italy, and raised in Castle Rock, Colorado, Adams is the fourth of seven siblings. She trained to be a ballerina, but at age 18, she found musical theater a better fit, and from 1994 to 1998, she worked in dinner theater. She made her feature film debut with a supporting part in the 1999 satire Drop Dead Gorgeous. After moving to Los Angeles, she made guest appearances in television and took on "mean girl" parts in small-scale features. Her first major role came in Steven Spielberg's 2002 biopic Catch Me If You Can, opposite Leonardo DiCaprio, but she was unemployed for a year afterward. Her breakthrough came in the part of a loquacious pregnant woman in the 2005 independent film Junebug.
  The 2007 musical Enchanted, in which Adams played a cheerful princess, was her first major success as a leading lady.
context_section_description: Adams began her professional career as a dancer in a 1994 dinner theater production of A Chorus Line in Boulder, Colorado. The job required her to wait on tables before getting up on stage to perform. She enjoyed singing and dancing, but disliked waitressing and ran into trouble when a fellow dancer, whom she considered a friend, made false accusations about her to the director. Adams said, "I never really knew what the lies were. I only knew I kept getting called in and lectured about my lack of professionalism." She lost the job but went on to perform in dinner theater at Denver's Heritage Square Music Hall and Country Dinner Playhouse. During a performance of Anything Goes at the Country Dinner Playhouse in 1995, she was spotted by Michael Brindisi, the president and artistic director of the Minneapolis-based Chanhassen Dinner Theater, who offered her a job there. Adams moved to Chanhassen, Minnesota, where she performed in the theater for the next three years. She loved the "security and schedule" of the job, and has said that she learned tremendously from it. Nonetheless, the grueling work took its toll on her: "I had a lot of recurring injuries—bursitis in my knees, pulled muscles in my groin, my adductor and abductor. My body was wearing out."
  During her time at Chanhassen, Adams acted in her first film—a black-and-white short satire named The Chromium Hook. Soon after, while she was off work nursing a pulled muscle, she attended the locally held auditions for the Hollywood film Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999), a satire on beauty pageants starring Kirsten Dunst, Ellen Barkin, and Kirstie Alley. Adams was cast in the supporting part of a promiscuous cheerleader. She felt that her character's personality was far removed from her own and worried about how people would perceive her. The production was filmed locally, which enabled Adams to shoot for her role while also performing Brigadoon on stage. Encouragement from Alley prompted Adams to actively pursue a film career, and she moved to Los Angeles in January 1999. She described her initial experience in the city as "dark" and "bleak", and she pined for her life back in Chanhassen.
  In Los Angeles, Adams auditioned for whatever parts came her way, but she was mostly given roles of "the bitchy girl". Her first assignment came within a week of her relocation in the Fox television series Manchester Prep, a spin-off of the film Cruel Intentions, in the lead role of Kathryn Merteuil (played by Sarah Michelle Gellar in the film). Following numerous script revisions and two production shutdowns, the series was canceled. Adams later said that a controversial scene in which her character encourages a girl to masturbate on a horse was the primary reason for its cancellation. The three filmed episodes were re-edited and released later in 2000 as the direct-to-video film Cruel Intentions 2. Despite a negative critical reception, Nathan Rabin of The A.V. Club wrote that Adams plays her "alpha-bitch role with vicious glee largely missing from Sarah Michelle Gellar's sterile take on the character".
  Adams next had a supporting role as the teenage nemesis of a movie star (played by Kimberly Davies) in Psycho Beach Party (2000), a horror parody of beach party and slasher films. She played the part as a homage to the actress Ann-Margret. From 2000 to 2002, Adams appeared in guest roles in several television series, including That '70s Show, Charmed, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Smallville, and The West Wing.
  Following brief roles in three small-scale features of 2002—The Slaughter Rule, Pumpkin, and Serving Sara—Adams got her first high-profile part in Steven Spielberg's comedy-drama Catch Me If You Can. She played Brenda Strong, a nurse with whom Frank Abagnale Jr. (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) falls in love. The film raised her confidence. Despite the film's success and praise for her "warm presence" from Todd McCarthy, a critic for Variety, it failed to boost her career. She was unemployed for a year after its release, leading her to almost quit film acting. Adams instead enrolled in acting 
caption: Steven Spielberg, who gave Adams her first major role in Catch Me If You Can (2002), was surprised that she did not break through after the film's release.[17]
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