- NEWS
- COMPETITION
- DIRECTORY
Amy Adams was so overwhelmed when working with Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman that she couldn't speak.
The 40-year-old actress teamed up with the two heavyweights on 2008's Doubt, which was about a priest's ambiguous relationship with a school boy.
Amy was astounded to find herself on set with Meryl and Philip, who died last year, and had a physical reaction to the pressure she felt.
"With Doubt, I got more and more overwhelmed during rehearsals with these giants, Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman, until I actually couldn’t speak," she told British newspaper The Guardian. "The director John Patrick Shanley said, 'It’s the character that’s doing that to you. This is how she’s feeling.' I was there with these powerhouses and I was wondering why I wasn’t a powerhouse too. But the character was afraid."
Amy has been nominated for five Oscars and is one of the most celebrated actresses of her generation. Despite that, she worries about what people will think of every new movie she stars in. It means she's learnt not to go online to read reviews, as it always proves too much for her.
"At the beginning, it was overwhelming on both sides. It’s wonderful to have people celebrate your work but there are definitely people who don’t like what I do," she said. "I’ve just learned to silence the outside voices because it distracts me. It steals joy. After Catch Me If You Can, I was paralysed by the idea of people paying attention to what I did. I had to learn to stay off the internet."
Amy's last Academy Award nomination was thanks to her role as Sydney Prosser in 2013's American Hustle. The character is loved by many thanks to her feisty attitude, but the actress isn't so enamoured.
"The reaction was that she was strong and sexy, but I saw it differently. There was something so damaged about her that didn’t sit well with me playing her," she said. "It was fun making the film and Christian [Bale] is one of my all-time favourite people to work with. And Sydney is a great character. But it didn’t feel good to play her. I felt her pain in a way that was difficult to deal with."