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Amy Adams has taken on a whole range of roles for her career, from a fairytale princess in Enchanted to a ’70s con artist in American Hustle. And for her latest project, she’s embodying a character unlike any other that she’s played before. Adams makes her debut today as Bev Vance in Hillbilly Elegy, the Netflix film based on J.D. Vance’s bestselling 2016 memoir.
Adams’ character in the film, Bev, is a mother of two who grapples with addiction issues while raising her son, J.D. (played by both Gabriel Basso and Owen Asztalos) and her daughter, Lindsay (Haley Bennett). While she worked as a nurse, she later lost her job due to addiction issues after rollerblading through the halls while high on drugs. To get into character, Adams underwent a serious transformation that made her nearly unrecognizable when the Hillbilly Elegy trailer first dropped.
By using a wig and small prosthetics, Adams was able to embody Bev — and she even coined a special nickname for her hair in the film. “I always name my wigs, and that wig was ‘Beaverly’ because it was so hot it was like wearing a beaver hat on my head,” she told Entertainment Weekly.
And while Adams and her character don’t have much in common at first glance, the actress told AV Club that she connected to Bev’s “physical nature” while getting into character as J.D.’s mom. “She became very familiar to me,” Adams said. “She reminded me of girls that I grew up with, she reminded me of how I did my hair for homecoming circa 1989, so there was something very familiar about her look to me.”
Aside from the makeup and styling, Adams also consulted the real life Bev in preparation for her Hillbilly Elegy role. As part of her research for the film, she sat down with Bev and got to know her story and her addiction journey. “I think when I’m playing somebody who you know is out there that is going to see this, I’m glad that you can see deeper than just the mistakes that she’s made because that was something that was really important to me,” Adams told EW. “There’s been several people that have been really important to me that have been touched by addiction. It’s a story of a whole bunch of people who’ve really struggled and it was really important to me to find the humanity in that struggle.”
Hillbilly Elegy is now streaming on Netflix.
