Better as red? Amy Adams thinks so! The Arrival actress, 42, revealed that dyeing her natural strawberry blonde hair changed the course of her entire career. “Based on roles that I was getting called in for, people were responding to certain types of characters with me as a blonde, and the minute I went red, it was quirky and fun instead of flirtatious and dumb,” Adams said in a New York Times TimesTalks conversation on Wednesday, November 9.
She noticed a shift in offers after going dark-red for Dr. Vegas, a CBS TV show with Rob Lowe, in 2004. And even though the makeover opened a few more doors, she learned another invaluable lesson. “It was great, I liked that [attention],” she mused. “But in all seriousness, it’s just hair color. It was really fascinating to see just one element of yourself change people’s perception, and that became a very powerful tool for me even in my acting. If you can change one very small thing and create an entirely different perception to the outside world based on one thing. And that was actually an important lesson for me to learn. I didn’t quite get that before then.”
Over the years, Adams’ mane has been, well, the main attraction on the carpet and even in some of her movie roles, like American Hustle. “David [Russell, the film’s director] saw [Sydney Prosser] being this darker red,” she told Vogue in 2014. “He thought it was really powerful, like, she just was on fire. He said, ‘I want it to feel like a cape,’ so I grew it out for quite some time. I tried not to complain, because Christian [Bale] had to walk around with that comb-over for three months, and Bradley [Cooper] spent three hours in curlers, so I really did not have it that bad! It sort of went along with her character, and it was really fun to get to play with that.”
