20. Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999)
After paying her dues in dinner theatre, Adams made a promising big-screen debut as delightfully dimwitted Leslie Miller, just one of the teenage contestants in a small-town Minnesota beauty pageant with a suspiciously high body count. This satirical mockumentary has built up a cult following since its release.
19. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006)
It’s hard not to be eclipsed by Will Ferrell (Ricky) and Sacha Baron Cohen, hogging all the big laughs in this Nascar comedy, but Gary Cole is brilliant as Ricky’s dissolute dad, and Adams does wonders as a mousy assistant who blossoms into a love interest while delivering some comically OTT inspirational speeches.
18. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009)
It is always a pleasure to see Ben Stiller slapped by monkeys, but it is Adams, adorable in a flying jacket and with a curly bob, as feisty aviatrix Amelia Earhart, who is Most Valuable Player in this breezy sequel to the special-effects fantasy about museum exhibits coming to life after hours. It is all very educational.
17. Catch Me If You Can (2002)
As Brenda, the brace-wearing candy-striper who snogs Leonardo DiCaprio’s fake doctor, Adams is a fresh and funny screen presence in her first major role. Steven Spielberg tipped her for stardom when he cast her in this conman romp, but it would be another three years before Junebug put her on the map.
16. Sunshine Cleaning (2008)
In Christine Jeffs’ comedy drama, Adams plays a single mom who starts a business cleaning up crime scenes with her feckless sister (Emily Blunt). Both actors are solid, and the film pootles along in a typically Sundance way, steering a course between platitude and familial dysfunction without achieving full emotional liftoff.
15. Julie & Julia (2009)
Adams puts in an impeccable performance as Julie, an underachieving millennial New Yorker, but in truth is a little overshadowed by a full-throttle Meryl Streep in Nora Ephron’s double-stranded comedy. While Julie blogs about Julia Childs’ recipes, Streep plays Childs herself, whose culinary adventures in postwar Paris are, it has to be said, a lot more fun.
14. Man of Steel (2013)
In the first of Adams’ three outings as Lois Lane (four if you count Zack Snyder’s Justice League), she is not just Superman’s romantic interest, but a clever, capable, courageous investigative reporter. Sadly, her screen time in the later films dwindles as Lois is relegated to the sidelines.
13. Doubt (2008)
The principal of a Catholic school in the Bronx suspects her parish priest of abuse in John Patrick Shanley’s adaptation of his own stage play. As a naive young teacher, Adams holds her own simply by providing a quieter space between the heavyweight declamations of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Streep.
12. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (2008)
Adams turns the screwball dial up to 11 as flighty American musical comedy star Delysia Lafosse, torn between penniless romance and career-furthering comfort as she juggles three suitors in 1930s art deco London. Frances McDormand plays the frumpy governess who comes to her rescue in this jolly, innocuous retro-romcom.
11. Hillbilly Elegy (2020)
Adams is almost unrecognisable as a dungaree-wearing, abusive, drug-addled mom in Ron Howard’s poverty-porn adaptation of JD Vance’s memoir about growing up in America’s Rust Belt. No po’-white-trash cliche is left unturned as our couch-loving hero is flummoxed by posh cutlery and upstaged by strong women on his way to Yale.
10. Vice (2018)
In her third collaboration with Christian Bale, Adams was Oscar-nominated for this performance as Lynne Cheney in Adam McKay’s biopic of Dick Cheney, the charisma-free vice-president who pulled the strings in George W Bush’s administration. The smug satire doesn’t always work, but Bale’s physical transformation is staggering, and Adams is formidable as the power behind the power behind the throne.
9. The Muppets (2011)
Wearing her singing-ingenue-with-attitude hat, Adams is a perfect fit for Disney’s clever franchise reboot, in which she helps her fiance (Jason Segel) and his muppety brother Walter stop an oilman (deliciously evil Chris Cooper) from demolishing the derelict Muppet Studio. Cue for reuniting Kermit, Miss Piggy and the rest of the gang in fun for all the family, bursting with star cameos and meta-gags.
8. Big Eyes (2014)
Tim Burton directs a surprisingly straightforward biopic of Margaret Keane, whose winsome paintings of big-eyed children were reviled by critics but adored by the public. Christoph Waltz is a one-note villain as her husband, who in 1960s San Francisco claims to have painted the pictures, but Adams gives a meticulous portrayal of a woman slowly learning to stick up for herself in a man’s world.
7. Junebug (2005)
An art dealer (Embeth Davidtz) visits her new husband’s family in North Carolina, where her big city ways are greeted with derision by everyone except Ashley, his pregnant sister-in-law. Played by anyone else, Ashley’s relentless ingenuousness would get on your nerves, but Adams’ sweet, funny, heartbreaking turn was her breakthrough performance, and earned her the first of six Oscar nominations.
6. The Fighter (2010)
Shucking off her girl-next-door image, Adams plays Charlene, the spunky bartender girlfriend of welterweight Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) in David O Russell’s fizzy blue-collar biopic. If Micky is to win in the boxing ring, he must break free from his crackhead brother and trainer (Bale in the first of three films with Adams), monstrous mother and shrewish sisters, who call Charlene a “skank”.
5. The Master (2012)
Once again, Adams provides backup to the mighty Hoffman, whose perverse father-son bond with Joaquin Phoenix’s troubled second world war veteran forms the backbone of Paul Thomas Anderson’s psychodrama. But what backup! As the cult leader’s superficially serene wife, she subverts her normally sunny screen persona to terrifying Lady Macbeth-style effect, earning the fourth of her Oscar nominations.
4. American Hustle (2013)
Bale and Bradley Cooper get the 1970s hairdos and Jennifer Lawrence gets the showy lip-sync set-piece, but it is Adams, in plunging Halston V-necks, who injects emotional truth into David O Russell’s farcical conman caper, which is loosely based on the FBI’s Abscam sting, even when she is taking others for a ride. Her impression of an English aristocrat called “Lady Edith” deserves a spin-off of its own.
3. Enchanted (2007)
Disney sends up its own fairytale agenda when a naive cartoon princess finds herself transformed into a flesh-and-blood woman in present-day Manhattan. It is a star-making performance from Adams, who makes Giselle adorable rather than cloying as she searches tirelessly for her prince, keeps bursting into song, and commandeers local rats and cockroaches into helping her clean her host’s apartment.
2. Nocturnal Animals (2016)
Adams is sensationally good, and has never looked more soignée, as the unhappy protagonist of Tom Ford’s chilly, disturbing revenge psychodrama, an art dealer who starts questioning her life decisions while she reads the manuscript of her ex-husband’s novel. No, her character isn’t likable, but you don’t see multi-faceted female performances like this every day, and 2016 was the year Adams gave two of them …
1. Arrival (2016)
The aliens have landed! But Earth threatens armed retaliation unless linguistic expert Louise Banks can work out what the heptapods are saying. Denis Villeneuve’s cerebral sci-fi, adapted from a story by Ted Chiang, combines low-key personal drama and awe-inspiring spectacle, with Adams thrillingly credible as an intellectual heroine probing the pros and cons of language, time and space. It is a travesty that her Oscar-worthy performance didn’t even get nominated.
