A conversation with the Oscar-nominated actress about books, reading, language, motherhood, Cape Fear and her admiration for Javier Bardem
Amy Adams has built a career out of moving between worlds. She has played princesses and scientists, artists and mothers, politicians and lawyers, women trapped by their circumstances and women determined to reinvent themselves. What many of her most memorable performances have in common, however, is that they began on the page of a book.
From The Master and Nocturnal Animals to Arrival, Sharp Objects and Nightbitch, Adams has repeatedly found herself inhabiting characters that first existed as novels, stories or other written works. Her latest project, Cape Fear, continues that relationship with literature. The Apple TV limited series, in which she plays attorney Anna Bowden opposite Javier Bardem, draws on John D. MacDonald’s 1957 novel The Executioners as well as the earlier screen adaptations. For Adams, reading is not simply preparation for a role. It is a way of understanding people.
Q: Your career contains so many adaptations of books and written works. What does literature give you as an actress that an original screenplay sometimes doesn’t?
Amy Adams: I think books allow you to enter a character’s interior world in a very particular way. You have access to thoughts, contradictions and details that may never appear explicitly on screen. When I read Rachel Yoder’s Nightbitch, for example, I immediately responded to her perspective and to the originality of her voice. There was something incredibly honest about the way she explored motherhood, identity, relationships and transformation.
The manuscript gave me an understanding of the character before we ever started filming. It also gave me a sense of the possibilities of the story. I love when a book makes you imagine how it could become a visual experience.
Q: Nightbitch seems particularly connected to your love of literature.
Amy Adams: Absolutely. I had studied Kafka’s The Metamorphosis when I was younger and it was one of the first novels that helped me understand how imagery can work in writing. I loved the book. When I was working on Nightbitch, I thought about transformation and about the way literature can express something that is difficult to explain literally.
But I also drew on my own experiences and on the experiences of women around me. The film became a kind of personal homage to Kafka, but it was also connected to motherhood, friendship, family and the women I know.
Q: You have also spoken about the importance of reading with your daughter. What does reading mean to you outside your work?
Amy Adams: It is one of those things you don’t always appreciate while you’re living through it. When my daughter was little, bedtime could feel endless. She would ask me to sing another song or read another book, and there were moments when I thought, “Are you ever going to go to sleep?”
Now she is older and I would give anything to have those hours back. I would love to sit there and read the same book four times. Those moments that seemed monotonous at the time have become treasures.
Reading is also a way of connecting. It creates a space where you can be together without needing to explain everything.
Q: You became involved with Save With Stories, reading books aloud to children. Why was that project meaningful to you?
Amy Adams: Books can create connections, particularly for children. The idea behind Save With Stories was to bring stories into children’s homes at a time when many children were away from school and families were struggling. Reading aloud can be simple, but it can also be incredibly powerful.
Stories give children a sense of imagination and continuity. They remind us that we are part of something bigger than ourselves. I think that is one of the reasons reading has always been so important to me.
Q: You played a linguist in Arrival, a film in which language becomes a character itself. Did making that film change the way you think about language?
Amy Adams: Absolutely. Arrival made me think about language in a way I hadn’t before. I became fascinated by the history of language, by the culture of language and by how communication helps us understand another culture.
The story is ultimately about empathy and understanding. Louise is trying to communicate with beings whose way of thinking is completely different from ours. That made me think about how much of our understanding of other people depends on the language we use.
Q: Do you speak Spanish?
Amy Adams: I can understand Spanish, but I’m not bilingual. I don’t have a natural facility for learning different languages. For Arrival, I also had to learn some Mandarin, using phonetic notes off camera. That experience reminded me how difficult language can be when you don’t have an instinctive relationship with it.
But I love listening to other languages. There is so much culture contained within the way people speak.
Q: Is that one reason you feel drawn to Spanish-speaking cultures and artists?
Amy Adams: I think culture is inseparable from language. When you encounter another language, you are also encountering another history, another way of expressing emotion and another way of seeing the world.
That is what I found so fascinating about Arrival. You can’t separate communication from culture. Learning how another person communicates is also a way of learning how they understand the world.
Q: You are now working with Javier Bardem in Cape Fear. What has that experience been like?
Amy Adams: It has been so much fun working with Javier. We fell into a very easy rhythm and had a wonderful time together, even though the series itself is frightening and, at times, extremely stressful. The experience of making it was joyful.
Javier brings something extraordinary to Max Cady. He can be incredibly intimidating, but he is also a generous actor and a wonderful person to work with.
Q: What is it about Javier Bardem that you admire as an actor?
Amy Adams: He has an extraordinary ability to transform. You can have a conversation with him and experience his warmth and generosity, and then he steps into the character and becomes something completely different.
That contrast is fascinating. Max Cady is dangerous and unpredictable, but Javier never approaches him as a simple villain. There are layers to the character, and that makes the performance much more interesting.
The new series also gives us a different perspective on the story. It is not simply about identifying a villain and a hero. It asks us to question what we believe and why we believe it.
Q: Cape Fear is ultimately another example of literature travelling across languages, generations and forms. Does that appeal to you?
Amy Adams: Very much. I love the idea that a story can begin as a novel, become a film and then be reimagined decades later for television. Each generation brings something different to it.
A good story can survive transformation because the fundamental human questions remain. Fear, family, guilt, responsibility, justice…those things don’t disappear. They change shape.
Q: If you were introducing American readers to Spanish literature and culture, which writers or poets would you recommend?
Amy Adams: I would encourage people to be curious. There are so many extraordinary voices in Spanish literature, and the most important thing is to find the writers who speak to you personally.
I would start exploring poets such as Federico García Lorca and writers such as Miguel de Cervantes. But I would also encourage readers not to stop with the classics. Translation gives us access to contemporary voices that can completely change our understanding of another culture.
And that is the beautiful thing about reading: you don’t have to speak every language to enter another world.
Q: What do you hope audiences take away from stories, whether they are watching Cape Fear, Arrival or Nightbitch?
Amy Adams: I hope they feel something. I hope they question themselves. I love stories that don’t tell you exactly what to think.
The stories that stay with me are the ones that make me uncomfortable or curious, the ones that make me think about another person’s experience. That’s what art can do. It can create empathy without giving you an instruction manual.
Q: After so many years of working with adaptations, what keeps bringing you back to books?
Amy Adams: The possibility of discovering something. Every time you open a book, there is an opportunity to encounter a perspective you haven’t considered before.
For me, acting is very much about that discovery. You begin with words on a page and eventually you have to find the human being inside them. Sometimes that person is very different from you. Sometimes you recognize yourself completely.
That’s the exciting part.
A book can give you a doorway into another person’s life. As an actor, that’s an extraordinary gift. As a reader, it’s the same thing.
