The role Amy Adams was waiting on her entire life: “I used to pretend to be her”
Amy Adams is among the greatest working actors, and she has been for a while, but a role she fought for her entire career wasn’t worth it.
Her role in Junebug was her breakout, and in the two decades that have followed, she has continued to take on interesting roles, work with interesting directors, and take risks with her performances, but she seems to have hit a career standstill, which might have begun with the most unfortunate role she has ever received, that of Lois Lane, the Daily Planet reporter and Clark Kent’s love interest in the DC Comics.
Adams had first auditioned to play the part in Superman Returns, the legacy sequel to the Christopher Reeve films that starred Brandon Routh as Kal-el. The role went to Kate Bosworth, but the film was a box office flop that didn’t inspire a sequel, which was yet a disappointment for Adams, as she had also auditioned to play Lois in the unproduced reboot Superman: Flyby, to have been directed by Brett Ratner.
It was after the success of The Dark Knight trilogy that Warner Bros grew more interested in a Superman reboot, and screenwriter David S Goyer handed in a pitch for what would become Man of Steel. Since it was another origin story, the film got to cast a new set of leads, and Adams finally landed the role that she had been waiting for.
“I never would have imagined I would play Lois Lane, though I used to pretend to be her,” she admitted, “It wasn’t that I wanted to be a reporter. I just loved her spunk and how she seemed smarter than everybody else.”
Adams isn’t necessarily bad in Man of Steel, but the film has no idea what to do with the character. It’s constantly mentioned that Lois is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, but her investigative process is depicted in the clumsiest way possible, and it didn’t help that she and Henry Cavill didn’t have any chemistry, even if that can mostly be blamed on the direction by Zack Snyder.
Thankfully, Man of Steel wasn’t held against her too much, for the same year, she appeared in American Hustle, which earned her an Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Actress’, and Her, for which she was praised as well.
Adams reprised her role as Lois in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, another film that had nothing interesting for her to do, but ironically, it was released in another year in which Adams did stellar work outside of the DC cinematic universe; while she didn’t receive an Oscar nomination, she turned in two of her best performances ever in Arrival and Nocturnal Animals.
The ‘Superman curse’ may have come for Adams, as her career has seemed to spiral after she was in Justice League. Between Disenchanted, Nightbitch, Dear Evan Hansen, The Woman in the Window, and Hillbilly Elegy, she has had a pretty rough few years, but thankfully, she’s is giving a great performance right now in the Apple TV reboot of Cape Fear, and might actually have a role in a blockbuster film that is worthy of her talents when she appears next year in Star Wars: Starfighter alongside Ryan Gosling, Mia Goth, Aaron Pierre, and Matt Smith.
