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Amy Adams: Snapshot

Name: Amy Adams
Date of Birth: August 20, 1974
Birth Place: Pordenone, Italy

Redhead Amy Adams burst onto Hollywood's radar as Leonardo DiCaprio's fiancée in 2002's Catch Me If You Can, nabbed Oscar acclaim with the 2005 indie Junebug, and cashed-in at the box office as the half-animated Disney princess Giselle in 2007's Enchanted.

Born in Italy and raised in Colorado, Adams won a small role in the 1999 beauty pageant spoof, Drop Dead Gorgeous, where costar Kirstie Alley encouraged the newbie to pursue acting in Hollywood. Since then, she's worked with everyone from Tom Hanks to Meryl Streep, eventually earning her second Academy Award nomination for Doubt and her third for The Fighter.

As for her personal life, Adams welcomed daughter Aviana with longtime love, fiancé Darren Le Gallo, in May 2010.

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Amy Adams: Five Fun Facts

At 18, Amy Adams worked as a Hooters waitress. "I did it because I needed to buy a car," she told London's Mail on Sunday in 2006. She left Hooters after saving $900 – enough to buy a used Chevrolet.
In 1999, Amy Adams landed a role on Manchester Prep, a TV series that never aired. But her scenes were eventually salvaged and used in the straight-to-video film, Cruel Intentions 2.
Amy Adams wore prosthetic braces for her role as Leonardo DiCaprio's love interest in Catch Me If You Can. "Anyway, he was dating Gisele. Let's be realistic," she told London's Mail on Sunday. "You've got a Victoria's Secret supermodel and a skinny girl with braces. Which would you pick?"
Amy Adams' Enchanted character has a doll made in her honor, but the actress had a hard time getting her hands on one. "They were sold out, and my boyfriend's niece wanted one for Christmas," she told Dateline NBC. "So I got in a bidding war on eBay for my own doll. It was very bizarre."
Amy Adams' milky skin earned her a childhood nickname: "My sister used to call me Fish-Belly Blue because I was so pale," she told In Style. "My skin rejects the sun. I had a grown man at a water park once yell at me to get a tan."

Amy Adams: Biography

1979: An Enchanting Entrance
Kathyrn and Rich Adams' fourth child, five-year-old Amy, begins starring in family productions, written by Rich. "My father liked to write songs and plays, and we would act them out," she later tells the New York Times. At 11, her parents get divorced and the family – which includes two sisters and four brothers – leaves the Mormon church. In 1992, Adams graduates from Castle Rock, Colo.'s Douglas County High School and juggles jobs at the Gap and Hooters while working as a dancer and waitress at Boulder's Dinner Theatre.
1999: Luck Drops In
Adams snags her first screen role, alongside Kirsten Dunst (right) and Kirstie Alley, in Drop Dead Gorgeous, a satirical film about a small-town beauty pageant. Alley soon encourages Adams to try her luck in Hollywood. Alley "more or less put that voice in my head," Adams later tells the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. "I was originally saving my pennies to go to New York."
2002: Catch Her If You Can
After arriving in L.A., Adams lands the role of Brenda Strong, Leonardo DiCaprio's fiancée, in Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can (left). "Amy got tons of attention for [the role], and she deserved every bit of it," Spielberg tells Elle in 2008. "That was the part that should have launched her career."