Amy Adams explains why her ‘Nightbitch’ role was a "catharsis"

“Pffthph!” Amy Adams sounds a daintily dismissive raspberry at the notion her role as a sleep-deprived stay-at-home mother in Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch flies in the face of what audiences expect from a Holly­wood leading lady. “It didn’t feel a hard leap because I live with that person every day,” she tells Screen International. “It was a catharsis to play a character who was losing her vanity. I didn’t think of it as stepping aside from what I guess would be called movie star glamour. I just saw it as a tool I could use to help tell this story.”

Adams has certainly proved game for altering her appearance for a challenging screen part, be it the meek wimpled nun she portrayed in Doubt or the brassily bedecked con-woman in American Hustle. The nameless “Mother” in Nightbitch, though, still constitutes an audacious departure for the 50-year-old actress, not least when her character — a former artist driven to distraction by the demands placed by her two-year-old son — starts mysteriously to adopt canine traits. “The challenge for me was to thread the needle so it always felt honest,” Adams says of her protagonist’s metamorphosis. “Even though it would seem to be a big swing from a storytelling perspective, I always wanted it to seem very grounded in Mother’s truth and her reality.”

Adams’ involvement in the project began when Annapurna Pictures, with which she had previously worked on Her, American Hustle and Vice, sent a manuscript of Rachel Yoder’s 2021 source novel. It was Adams’ idea to approach Heller, having been impressed by her directing debut The Diary Of A Teenage Girl and subsequent films Can You Ever Forgive Me? and A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood. “I loved how her tone and visual technique of storytelling was so unique and singular,” Adams says of Heller, whose career as an actress predates her pivot to filmmaking. “I thought she had the right sensibility for the piece and would have a personal perspective on it, having recently had a child.”

Over the course of Nightbitch, Adams’ character acquires six additional nipples, a taste for raw meat and a hairy tail-like protuberance. She also develops a bond with her neighbours’ pooches, who take to leaving dead animals on her doorstep. Adams admits Mother takes an “unexpected journey” in the Toronto-­launched Searchlight Pictures title that “defies genre”.

With Heller’s help, though, she felt equipped to shoulder the film’s unorthodox set of challenges. “Because we had an understanding of how raw and primal we wanted it to feel, I was never self-conscious,” she explains. “I trusted that Marielle knew how to make it work, and that allowed me to get lost in the unusual aspects of the filmmaking.”

Producing ambitions

Being one of Nightbitch’s six producers — all women — brought an added responsibility Adams was equally happy to take on. “One of the things I loved was having crucial conversations during the development process,” she says of a role she previously filled on Disenchanted, the 2022 sequel to Disney’s fantasy Enchanted. “It was a rare gift to get to have an insight on the material and to be a part of bringing Mari on. I found it helpful by the time we started shooting, as we didn’t have a lot of rehearsal time. Mari has a team she brings with her that she trusts implicitly, so I was just there to do the role and support the crew around us.”

Since her breakthrough performance as a pregnant southern naïf in 2005’s Junebug — a role that earned her the first of six Oscar nominations — Adams has established herself as a prolific and versatile actress across a range of genres. In recent years, though, she has begun to seek out and develop her own material through Bond Group Entertainment, the production company she co-founded with her manager Stacy O’Neil in 2019. “I don’t have a specific thing I’m going after,” Adams says of her producing aspirations. “I just know when I read something if it feels different or singular or fun.” Projects in development include legal thriller The Holdout, a limited series she says is “over at HBO in development”, and Lazy Susans, a 20th Century Studios comedy film about mothers forming a garage band.

On the acting front, Adams will next be seen in Klara And The Sun, Taika Waititi’s adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel about a robot (played by Jenna Ortega) that becomes companion to a sickly girl (Screen International 2024 Star of Tomorrow Mia Tharia). Adams, who plays the girl’s mother, shot the film this year in New Zealand and describes the experience as “transformative”.

Also in the pipeline is At The Sea, a drama about a woman newly out of rehab, from husband-and-wife filmmaking duo Kornel Mundruczo and Kata Weber. “I get to dance some interpretive modern dance in it,” the one-time-trainee ballerina says of a film that, like the directors’ Pieces Of A Woman (2020), includes a number of “long, epic takes”.

“We shot it in a very short timeframe over the summer, so it was very intense but I had a great time playing another complex character.”

With those six Academy Award nominations but no win, Adams is not far behind her Hillbilly Elegy co-star Glenn Close (eight nominations and no win) in this particular ranking. “I don’t put any expectation on anything,” says an actress whose Bafta history — no wins from seven nominations — is even more unfruitful. “I am grateful for the opportunities the Academy has given me, so for me it feels like a privilege. I try to stay in a space of gratitude and not think about it with any result in mind.

“The wonderful thing about having a performance that’s even in the conversation is it can draw attention to a film that might not otherwise find an audience.”

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