July 21, 2005

I was chatting with some studio big brains the other day about the dearth of young movie stars. It's true. There are a lot of young actors who come and go, shining brightly, but falling off for all kinds of reasons.

One of the likely flashes in the pan of the last decade was Cameron Diaz. She came out of nowhere in The Mask. But as beautiful and charming as she was, there was no indication that she could act. So Ms. Diaz made The Last Supper, She's The One, Feeling Minnesota, Head Above Water and Keys To Tulsa before she took her next wide release role, a supporting one, in My Best Friend's Wedding.

Magic! An overnight sensation three years and five nearly unseen movies after being an overnight sensation.

There are two young, beautiful overnight sensations in play right now. One is Rachel McAdams, who first came to the U.S. from Canada to do The Hot Chick, which was released in 2002. She did a six episode comedy series in Canada called Slings & Arrows. And then, last year, she doubled dipped into the big time, as the main supporting actress in Mean Girls and then as the lead of the surprise long-legged summer hit, The Notebook. While she was shooting another supporting role in Wedding Crashers, she was offered a million dollars to do Red Eye, the Wes Craven film being released by Dreamworks next month.

Word has it that Ms. McAdams, who I tagged as a movie star of the future after seeing an early screening of The Notebook and then looking at the range of her earlier work, has already started to move towards being "difficult," even before Wedding Crashers arrived or her first $1 million pay day was being sold. She apparently got her sanity back enough to become less difficult in the publicity process for these two films. But her reputation among the people who she has to work hand in hand with as/if she ascends further has been a bit tarnished.

She has another film due out in the fall that returns her to a quality ensemble, with Claire Danes taking the lead girl slot. Good for her. She has the goods… so long as she doesn't lose perspective.

The other phenom of the moment is Amy Adams, who got endlessly sterling notices at Sundance in Junebug, which will be released by Sony Classics on August 5. Her performance won a Special Jury Prize at the festival. I think it's fair to say that this film is not going to gross as much as The Notebook.

In fact, Ms. Adams has made a dozen movies and a TV series already since hitting Hollywood in 1999 with a scene-stealing turn in Drop Dead Gorgeous. Most of the films fell off the edge of the movie earth. The exception was Catch Me If You Can, where she played the near-wife of DiCaprio's character. The film did huge business and Adams was mentioned in most reviews, but she didn't work in film for a year after that. Go figure.

She then made two films that got no theatrical release, a bunch of television guest spots and co-starred Rob Lowe's Hello, Larry-esque show after walking away from The West Wing, Dr. Vegas.

And then, Junebug. For many of us, it seemed like a natural progression for a remarkably likeable actress. But her struggle to get there was not apparent.

The star of Drop Dead Gorgeous, Kirsten Dunst, has had enormous success. Fellow blonde actresses Amy Smart and Ali Larter got a lot of studio opportunities since they broke into the scene in 1999 (same year as DDG). Adams has had Catch, plus Serving Sara and The Wedding Date.

Looking for the "right blonde girl," the option of Dunst as the perky girl with a dark side, Smart as the hippy chick or Larter as the strong sexpot, seems to have left Adams as the surface innocent with a secret sexual appetite… in other words, as a narrowly cast character actress.

But it seems that Adams is ready to come of age as an actress. She is looking forward to going to Broadway in musical soon. Her acting career started in dinner theater in Colorado, which led to her recruitment to more dinner theater in Minnesota. The producers of The Light in The Piazza should be chasing Ms. Adams to play the ingénue in that show. And the producers of the film version of Hairspray: The Musical would be fools not to look to her to play Penny Pingleton if she isn't slightly too old for the role.

But mostly, Adams has shown the range and versatility that McAdams has demonstrated in a concentrated period combined with the well-toned muscle of a veteran actress.

She is also strikingly more pretty in person than she gets to be in most of her roles. Perhaps it is that her current dark color, which is not the blonde she turns up with in most films, frames her face more clearly and makes her blue eyes pop all the more. But I think a lot of it is that she is actually a woman, not the girl or immature woman that she has often played. She is relaxed in person. But she is also more self-aware.

Her clothing choice on this press day was assertively feminine, but I got the sense that she would have been more comfortable in a t-shirt or something that didn't draw so much visual attention. It is interesting that most of her film performances have ended up getting to her sensuality, which is also true of Judy Greer, who just celebrated her 30th birthday yesterday. (Congrats, Judy.)

I guess the progenitor of this group in recent years was Samantha Mathis, who was great pals with Sandra Bullock, who ascended to a different level. Reese Witherspoon is the current queen of the 30ish blondes with acting chops.

It's kind of fascinating watching this group go through the rollercoaster. If you want one of these general types of girls right now, it's Witherspoon first with McAdams second. Greer is a directors' favorite and has remarkable comic skills that stay grounded even in the most weakly directed films.

Amy Adams can become the next ascendant actress. And her passions for her work are still in the right place. She is growing and evolving and she is aware of it, but not too self-conscious. And most of all, she can act her ass off.

The car she drove to the Regent Beverly Wilshire for the Junebug press day… the rear view mirror is broken. She'll get it fixed one of these days. In the meanwhile, it eill be up to you to keep an eye on her.

E-ME.