Amy Adams's Outfits

Amy Adams was born in Aviano, Italy, but grew up in Vicenza, Italy, the daughter of American parents Kathryn and Richard Adams, who was a U.S. serviceman stationed in Italy. She grew up as one of seven children in Castle Rock, Colorado and was raised in the Mormon religion, although her family left the church after Adams' parents divorced when she was 11 years old. Throughout her years at Douglas County High School, she sang in the school choir and trained as an apprentice at a local dance company with ambitions of becoming a ballerina. However, after graduating from high school, she decided that she was "never going to be that good at ballet, no matter how hard she worked" and entered musical theater, which she found was "much better suited to her personality".

To support herself while performing in community theater, Adams worked at Gap as a greeter and at Hooters as a hostess and a waitress, a fact that became her "entire press career for a while". She began working professionally as a dancer at Boulder's Dinner Theatre and Country Dinner Playhouse, where she was spotted by a Minneapolis dinner theatre director, Michael Brindisi. Along with her family, Adams moved to Chanhassen, Minnesota, where she continued to work at Chanhassen Dinner Theatres. While she was off work nursing a pulled muscle, Adams auditioned for the satirical 1999 comedy Drop Dead Gorgeous, which was being filmed in Minnesota, and was cast in her first film role. Persuaded by her Drop Dead Gorgeous co-star, Kirstie Alley, Adams moved to Los Angeles, California in 1998. Shortly after, she was cast in Fox Network's television series spin-off of Cruel Intentions, Manchester Prep, in the role of Kathryn Merteuil. The series did not live up to the network's expectations and following numerous script revisions and two production shutdowns, it was cancelled.