A welcome 'Arrival' for Amy Adams: Oscar buzz

Amy Adams is ringing out the year in style.

Adams, 42, is getting raves in two films, “Nocturnal Animals” and “Arrival.” She spoke recently about the latter, in which she plays Louise Banks, a linguist brought in by the U.S. military to try to figure out why spacecraft have landed in various places on Earth. She’s got five Academy Award nominations under her belt; there is plenty of Oscar buzz surrounding these performances, too.

Unassuming and ready to laugh at herself, Adams talked mostly about “Arrival,” but also about what it’s like to have a couple of potential hits on her hands.

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Question: You can accurately describe “Arrival” as a science-fiction film about aliens, but it’s a lot more than that.

Answer: I agree with you.

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Q: Was that what you liked about the script?

A: Absolutely. It seemed like one thing at the onset and by the end it was a completely different thing than I expected. So I had to go back and read it again immediately, and to kind of dive into what it would look like to bring this to screen performance-wise was really interesting to me. It seemed like a really fun challenge and the director, Denis (Villeneuve), had such a great take on it. When you read it you never know if the experience of watching it for the audience will be the same. So hopefully we’ve been able to bring that to screen.

Q: Isn’t that true of everything you make?

A: Oh sure, yeah. That’s your intent (laughs). But this one felt trickier. It felt like the margin of error was different. It had a lot of high concepts it was dealing with, but one of the things I think that helps it work is that Denis really did want it to have an emotional through line that did connect you to sort of the beginning and the end of the movie, to bring you back to what the movie’s about.

Q: It has a really interesting look, dark, almost dreamy. But in real life I’m sure it didn’t look like that.

A: No, but there definitely was an energy on set. There definitely was a tone that was created. It was a very positive experience making this movie. Denis creates a very sort of calm set, and the sets we were working in felt very isolated and surreal. For example, the way the fog is rolling down — that happened. That’s not a computer effect. So we were standing there getting ready to shoot and they had set the camera up and that’s what happened. The fog rolled in that way and that’s what you see in the film, and it’s kind of an amazing serendipity. But there was a lot of that in this film.

Q: You probably really want to get those takes right the first time.

A: Yeah, right? A friend of mine who is a cinematographer and a director said, “I kept watching this film and I just felt a sense of anxiety, because you guys shot a lot at golden hour, and I know you only have 15 minutes to get all that stuff.” And it’s true. I was like, oh yeah, I kind of forgot we were always in a hurry to get the takes, because so much of it was at dawn and at sunset, and you only have so much time when the light will match.

Q: Louise lives in a pretty swell house.

A: Right? It was beautiful, wasn’t it? I’ve been lucky. I played two characters this year. Both of them have exquisite houses with a lot of glass. But I like how Denis ties it in, the sort of rectangular shapes.

Q: Something about the glass and the openness make her seem more vulnerable.

A: That’s very true. There was a feeling of being exposed and being vulnerable.

Q: She acts like she doesn’t want the gig, trying to figure this out, but she obviously really does.

A: Oh, she absolutely wants the gig. But she knows the only way to get it is to walk away. There’s a boldness in that. But she wants the gig on her terms, meaning she knows she has to be in front of them. She can’t actually do the job otherwise.

Q: Does that strategy work in real life?

A: For me? No (laughs). I’m not that tricky. I have no trickery in me. I’m pretty earnest. People pretty much know my intent early on. I’m not a good negotiator, chess player, in that way. I’m not good at hiding.

Q: I know you have nothing to do with scheduling your films, but it’s kind of interesting that you have this and “Nocturnal Animals” coming out back to back. What’s that like, to have two acclaimed performances in a row?

A: It’s amazing. I mean, you never know if that’s going to happen, first off. But I shot them back-to-back, so I definitely felt like I was in this place of self-examination. So it’s nice that I could kind of channel that into these two roles. But you never know how it’s going to turn out. Neither of the films had an intended release date when I shot them, so you never know. It’s cool, actually, for lack of a better vocabulary word. It’s cool to be out there with two films. I’ve been now at three festivals with both of them. I’m really proud of them and I’m proud of what they have to say, and they’re both unique, and different visions. It’s nice when unique films that sort of don’t fit a specific mold are received well. That’s a good feeling, and it sort of bodes well for the future of film. So it’s nice that the films can still be made and received in that way.

Q: It’s refreshing when people admit that they’re excited or happy about it, instead of low-balling it.

A: For me it’s like, I don’t need it for myself, but what’s cool is when the film is not just a performance thing. The director’s awesome, the (director of photography) is awesome, the soundtrack of both films, the score is beautiful in both films. So there’s just so many parts of the craft that I think are done at such a high level in both films that it’s really neat to be a part of that.

“Neat” and “cool.” It’s like, what era am I from? Ha! It’s been a long day. “Neat” and “cool” is what I’m left with.

Q: You’re not your character.

A: No. I’m not a linguist. I think it’s fair to say that my intelligence comes when it’s written that way.

Q: A lot of people love words, but linguistics takes that to a different level.

A: I like the way that her approach to language is used as a tool of communication. Like, that’s her approach and her ability to communicate why communication is important is really fascinating. I enjoyed that aspect of breaking down a sentence, and how one has to understand intent and all of it. It was really fun to explore, and to get to speak with a linguist and understand how they approach things scientifically, but also anthropologically and sociologically. It’s a science I never really understood before. I still can’t say I completely understand it, but I have a deeper understanding than I did before.

Q: It’s fascinating when she’s explaining why someone would learn this word before that word, how it fits together.

A: In talking to a linguist, when she read the script I asked how much of that stuff made sense to her, and was there a different way to approach it? And she said no, that’s pretty much how we would approach it and it’s really accurately done. She said of course there would be other things that we do that we can’t address in the film.

Q: Yes. People’s actual jobs are not quite as cinematically interesting as they are in movies.

A: Neither is mine, to be honest, if you followed me around (laughs).

Q: Without giving too much away, I’m assuming for a lot of the time you were acting you were standing there in front of a big nothing.

A: Just a big white screen, yeah. It looked a lot like a movie screen without any movie on it.

Q: Is that hard?

A: Um, yeah, sometimes technically it was hard. But as far as emotionally and sort of creating what isn’t there, it was made a lot easier by Denis and having the cast there with me. Denis was really great — he became sort of the alien for us. We would hear his voice, sort of what they would do. He would narrate their actions for us. That became the sort of soothing voice in my ear. Because of course we’re in these suits and we can’t hear anything. We would just hear him in our ear very quietly go, “They arrive.” And you’d be like, OK, they’re here. “They move to the left.” It was really fun.

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Q: Seeing photos of you in a spacesuit kind of outfit, you wonder, how is she going to act in that thing?

A: Just act. The good thing is, you are somewhat uncomfortable, and I’m completely claustrophobic, so that, to me, is great. The anxiety will be real. Just do it.

Q: You say you shot the films back to back. They’re both intense. Was it hard to jump from one to the other?

A: It can be sometimes. On this one, the trick was that I felt so connected to Louise I felt like shedding her wasn’t hard, but then reinvesting in another character, I had to really find a different way in. Sometimes I come in because I really like the character, or I like something they had to say. In “Nocturnal Animals” I remember really being like, “Ugh, I know her, but I don’t want to be her,” and all these things. It actually helped, because I realized I was judging her and I didn’t know if I liked her, but then I approached it from a place where she was judging herself. She doesn’t like herself, and that’s where she finds herself and her life in that moment. So it ended up being a great starting place. Once I was able to do that I was able to dive deeper into why she doesn’t like herself, and what’s happened, to invest in the character that became very interesting to me, and very different from how I felt doing other characters. It was fun.

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: @goodyk.