Amy Adams has created many roles over the course of her notable career, with a wide range of human qualities, and has commented about how creating characters impacts her personally.
She said in an interview years ago:
“I’ve always felt more comfortable [with comedy] because I was scared of drama.
“I didn’t really know how to access my emotional side without wounding my own person.
“Once I learned how to do that it opened up all these doors to me and I realized, You know what? Real life contains moments of laughter followed by uncontrollable sobbing.
“I think tackling certain characters has definitely helped me in my life because I can’t come to the truth about a character when I’m lying to myself.
“As a result it forces you to look at things and sometimes it is painful and you don’t want to deal with it.”[Interview mag., Feb 2008.]
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Adams has commented about being drawn to ‘positive’ roles:
“I think that I’ve always been attracted to characters who are positive and come from a very innocent place. I think there’s a lot of room for discovery in these characters and that’s something I always have fun playing.”
On her character Sydney Prosser in American Hustle (2013): – ” (She) is the most miserable human being I’ve ever played.
“She is not – happy. I’m used to playing people that, even if they’re survivors, there’s some sort of light in them. I don’t know that she has that, necessarily… I think I like playing happy people.” (From her imdb profile – unknown dates.)
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This is a photo of Amy Adams from Sharp Objects, premiering July 8, 2016 on HBO.
In her Los Angeles Times interview article, Yvonne Villarreal notes “the limited series is an adaption of the 2006 debut novel of the same name from author Gillian Flynn, whose other novels, “Gone Girl” and “Dark Places,” were made into feature films.
She adds, “Sharp Objects is a psychological thriller that stars Adams as Camille Preaker, a troubled reporter with a penchant for drinking and cutting herself, who has been assigned to cover the mysterious murders of two young girls in her small Missouri hometown of Wind Gap.
“The journey to her fictional home also forces Camille to confront the corrosive effects of her psychologically abusive relationship with her mother, Adora, played by Patricia Clarkson.
Adams comments about her character:
“She just has such a deep pain. That’s something that I sense in people around me, I sense in myself — there’s a darkness or pain and it’s not something that we share openly.
“That’s what I’m always interested in exploring… this private experience of life.”
She continues, “Even if we don’t have similar vices in common with Camille, I think you can take away this idea of feeling alone or feeling unwanted or an alienation from family, which creates alienation itself.
“In the book, the line that got me, which always gets me, is [Camille’s] boss says — or she’s recalling something her boss said — and she says, Curry always said I was a soft touch.
“Outside of all of these really dramatic vices that she has, she’s a really tender heart and she cares.
“I find the most tender people are the most easily wounded and they end up with the biggest scars.”
From ‘Sharp Objects’ star Amy Adams and director Jean-Marc Vallée talk family dysfunction and rock to Led Zeppelin by Yvonne Villarreal, Los Angeles Times June 28, 2018.
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Many creative people who are drawn to acting are “tender” – in the sense of having the personality trait of high sensitivity, which can make us more vulnerable to stress and hurt and trauma – but are also more likely to be creative.
One of my articles on this topic is Using Your High Sensitivity Personality As an Actor.
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Talented actors and other artists make use of their inner emotional lives, including the shadow and dark sides, to be more alive and creative.
Anthony Hopkins says “I think the healthy way to live is to make friends with the beast inside oneself, the dark side of one’s nature, and have fun with it.”
Psychotherapist Mihaela Ivan Holtz helps creative people in TV/Film, performing and fine arts.
She notes:
“A dark side of being a creative and a performer, is to have access to certain emotional states that are the medium through which art is created.”
But, she adds
“At the same time, these emotional states can become a risky affair.
“As many of us have mourned the premature loss of artists we love.
“Thus, a fine balance between navigating the emotional career demands and being in touch with one’s emotions may be hard to strike for some creatives and performers.
“At the same this balance is at the core of creating, performing, and living with emotional freedom.
Read more in article Make friends with our shadow self to be more creative.
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Douglas Eby (M.A./Psychology) is author of the The Creative Mind series of sites which provide “Information and inspiration to help creative people thrive.”
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