For better or for worse, Amy Adams has a little smarty-pants on her hands!
During an interview with the latest issue of emmy magazine, which hits newsstands on June 19, the five-time Oscar nominee opened up about how her 7-year-old daughter, Aviana Le Gallo, recently outsmarted her.
"I was apologizing for something I did, and I said, 'Sometimes Mommy loses her temper when she shouldn't, and Mommy is really sorry,'" the actress recalled. "She's 7 and a half, and she made me laugh so hard. I felt like this was a huge moment, something that we could both learn from. But instead, she wasn't affected at all. She said, 'Is there a reason why you're talking about yourself in the third person?'"
The "Arrival" star isn't just thinking twice when it comes to teachable moments with her little girl. She's also been forced to consider creative ways to explain some of her tougher acting jobs to her offspring with husband Darren Le Gallo. (Hey, not everything is "Enchanted.")
Take her next starring role, for example: Amy is headling the HBO limited series "Sharp Objects" as Camille Preaker, a troubled crime reporter who self-harms and over-indulges in alcohol. The actress was forced to think fast when Aviana noticed the confusing prosthetic wounds on her mom.
"When the prosthetic goo would get stuck in weird places, she'd ask me what it was," Amy told emmy. "I'd say, 'Oh, she has birthmarks.' … But she always knows to ask more questions, so that's when I say, 'You can't see this until you're 16.' And then she's like, 'Oooh, what's it about?'"
When she's not digging deep to bring Gillian Flynn's debut novel to the small screen, Amy enjoys the mundane moments of ordinary parenthood: "There's pick-up [at school]. Dinners. Normal life stuff. Going to [Aviana's] tae kwon do test. Being there. Things I miss," she said of her favorite ways to spend time when she's not on set.
The "normal life stuff" certainly sounds like a blessing when you consider how deeply in character the actress can get: "I call it, like, an infection," she told emmy. "Like there's a part of me that becomes my character to some degree."
Her "Sharp Objects" alter ego has been especially challenging: "I've flirted with dysfunction in my roles, but I've never delved quite as deep," she said. "I've played people with issues, but they've masked them in different ways. Camille is rough around the edges. She's trying, she really is, but she just doesn't do a good job of masking her issues, so a lot of her stuff is brought to the surface."
As if that doesn't sound taxing enough, Amy also flexed a new muscle — producing — with "Sharp Objects," which debuts on July 8.
"I've just never trusted myself before," she told emmy of what made this the time for her to jump into the development process. "I didn't even start having active feedback from directors until 'Big Eyes.' … [Director] Tim [Burton] and I just talked and I realized, 'Oh, I actually can voice my thoughts on character.'"
It helps that she had a strong squad of women working alongside her to bring "Sharp Objects" to life: "I just loved the power team of females," she told emmy. "We sat down and I started hearing their point of view, how they wanted to approach it. That's when I was like, 'Oh, I could work with these women!' That's when I started getting excited."
And work they did! As emmy puts it, Amy's work ethic is "practically encoded in her DNA."
"My grandmother was the daughter of a rancher," said the actress. "She worked her whole life, my grandma. So my mother was challenged to work as well from a very young age, and she taught us that too."
She had a series of odd jobs before she made it big as an actress — from selling licorice at a rodeo to serving as a greeter at the Gap and a Hooters girl.
"Even if I just hated it, I've always been the type of person who could not not do my job the way I'm supposed to," Amy told emmy. "I cannot go halfway on anything I commit to. I just can't."
Watch the video below to see what career Amy would have if she wasn't an actress, and check out more of her interview with emmy on June 19.
