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It’s easy to be good, but bad is where it’s at for Amy Adams, the “overnight” star who came close to giving up on her Hollywood dream before stardom struck.
With her ethereal beauty and slim, dancer’s frame, Adams is generally chosen to play characters who are innocent, earnest, sunny and kind-hearted — and usually markedly younger than her 34 years.

Her casting as the good girl is something that both fulfils and frustrates the actor.

‘‘I am definitely attracted to these sort of characters,” she says.

‘‘There is something about the exploration of innocence and the ruin of innocence that is
fascinating to me.”

But Adams has some other ideas, too.

‘‘I would love to play somebody really dark and evil, but I’m sure people would be like, ‘That’s hysterical. That’s the funniest performance I’ve ever seen’,” she says with a laugh.

‘‘Because, if I take all my make-up off, I’ll look like I’m completely innocent. I’m looking forward to ageing so I can explore some different parts of my personality.”

Adams’ biggest role to date was as the kooky, lost Princess Giselle in Disney’s subversive fairytale hit Enchanted.

Now the flame-haired stunner looks set to receive her second Oscar nomination for her performance in drama Doubt.

In the adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Adams plays Sister James, a timid young nun caught between a charismatic but potentially sexually abusive priest (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and a power-hungry, self-righteous Mother Superior (Meryl Streep).

Adams so badly wanted the part — which had already been cast — that she flew herself to New York and asked John Patrick Shanley, who wrote the play and directed the film, to meet her for coffee.

A few months later, he offered her the part.

‘‘I was familiar with the play and just loved the way he adapted it for the screen,” she says.

‘‘I fell in love with the character and it became something I felt very strongly about doing. So I fought for the part.”

Streep believes her younger co-star was the ideal choice for the role.

‘‘There are very few people who can truly convey innocence, who have the quality of untrammeled snow,” Streep says.

‘‘She can create the feeling of a girl who truly believes, and that’s why she is where she is. Amy is the real deal.”

Adams, who was raised a Mormon until her family left the religion when she was 12, says her upbringing helped her hone her performance as the positive and warm Sister James.

‘‘There is something I understand about that personality type,” she says.

‘‘I was raised in the Mormon Church and in the women of the Mormon Church who I was around, it’s a valuable trait to be cheerful.

‘‘To be happy and kind and obedient and cheerful is valued almost above anything else. So whether or not that is something I practise on a daily basis, it’s definitely genetically in me.”

After Doubt, Adams worked opposite Streep again — though they have only one scene together in Julie and Julia.

Due out in October, the film is the story of a wannabe writer (Adams) who cooks and blogs her way through the recipes of culinary legend Julia Child (Streep).

‘‘I use a lot more butter now,” Adams says with a laugh.

‘‘There’s a line in the film where my character says ‘Julia Child taught me to cook’ — and that’s exactly how I feel.”

Next, Adams — who has also starred in Charlie Wilson’s War and Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day — will play Amelia Earhart in the Ben Stiller sequel Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.
She hasn’t always had it so good.

Trying to launch her acting career by singing in dinner theatre, Adams had a far-from-illustrious job at Hooters, the US bar chain that prides itself on its busty waitresses dressed in skimpy outfits.

The job was not a way of rebelling against her Mormon upbringing.

‘‘God no, it was an act of a really young actress needing to pay bills. I was on my own when I was 17,” she says.

‘‘I didn’t see it as a dirty thing and maybe that was the innocent side of me.

‘‘I was a dancer at the time, I was running around in leotards, so it wasn’t a big deal, it wasn’t about my body.

‘‘I’m not somebody who is overtly sexual, anyway. I don’t think that’s what you see when you look at me.

‘‘There was definitely an innocence to my interpretation of what Hooters was about. Though I did learn, quickly, that short shorts and beer don’t mix. I opened the doors to some pretty skanky men who were speaking inappropriately to me.”

Adams grew up in small-town Colorado and Minnesota, and moved to Hollywood in 1999 at the urging of her co-star Kirstie Alley after a role in Drop Dead Gorgeous.

She had marginal success in television and small films, and in 2002 was cast by Steven Spielberg in Catch Me if You Can, alongside Leonardo DiCaprio.

But the role failed to ignite her career, and after a year of unemployment, she came close to quitting the dream.

It wasn’t until her breakout, Oscar-nominated role in 2005′s low-budget independent drama Junebug, where she played a pregnant Southern girl, that Adams found her feet in Hollywood.

‘‘It wasn’t necessarily that I was going to give up acting but I was definitely going to change
course,” she says.

‘‘I was thinking about moving to New York, maybe getting back into musicals, retraining myself as a dancer and getting my voice back in shape.

‘‘So I have to say necessity fuels my dreams, because on top of acting being a dream, it was my profession. I always used performing to pay my bills so the necessity helped me stay in it.

‘‘If I’d had another option, I might not have been as resilient.”

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