Frances McDormand and Amy Adams in Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day Courtesy of Focus Features

While the general movie-going public may not yet have 'grown accustomed to her face,' Hollywood has taken very careful notice. Adams is poised to appear in a slew of films that will make her not only more recognizable but also more sought-after She has also chosen projects that have allowed her to star opposite some of most revered actresses of our time. When the opportunity arose to play Delysia Lafosse, an American actress and singer performing in 1930s London in Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, Adams says she cannot say if it was the character or the chance to work with Frances McDormand that attracted her to the project. "I knew she was playing Miss Pettigrew so I went to the reading of it knowing that." The titular character is a down-and-out governess who has been reduced to scrounging for food on the streets of London after being turned out from her previous job without so much as a penny. A trip to an employment agency provides Miss Pettigrew with the chance to intercept a job opportunity as a "social secretary," the responsibilities of which she barely comprehends. Arriving at Delysia's luxurious apartment, Pettigrew saves the day by managing in the nick of time to hustle out one of the songstress' lovers before the next one arrives. She immediately becomes an indispensable confidant in matters of love and life to the dizzyingly frothy and fun Delysia. With a blend of charm and frivolous sensuality, Delysia navigates her way through her conflicted emotions for the three men in her life. Adams saw role as an opportunity to show sexuality from a different point of view. "There was an innocence about it. And that was the way it was portrayed in the 1930s. Everything was tongue-in-cheek and sort of naughty but not crude, and not crass. It was old-fashioned. I like the way that it was handled in the script."

Adams was less nervous about acting opposite McDormand than stamping her interpretation of the character in front of the director and cast from the get-go. "When you show up, you do a table read, and that is always for me the most frightening part of the experience. You sit down and you say the words for the first time. And in a situation like that, this is the first time a lot of these people have seen what I am going to bring to Delysia. I sort of dove into it. I definitely made a decision. I definitely knew what my intentions were with the role. To then share that with everybody and hope that everyone is going to be on the same page. It is not like I just didn't make a choice. It is definitely an intentional performance. And that was scary."

Amy Adams in Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day Courtesy of Focus Features

Like Giselle in Enchanted, Delysia is a character brimming with joie de vivre and unflagging optimism. But Adams doesn't overanalyze the similarities. "I don't really try to compare my roles," she notes. "When I was playing Delysia, I didn't consciously think about it like that. They both have a lot of energy. They both approach things with a certain passion, and they're very sure of themselves and their convictions. They do have things in common." But if may seem like Adams is more adept at playing fizzy, dizzy characters with an awe-struck naïveté, she is about to put any such preconceptions to rest with her performance as Rose Lorkowski in Sunshine Cleaning (opposite Emily Blunt and Alan Arkin), one of the breakouts of this year's Sundance Film Festival. "That was a harder experience for me," she admits. "I usually play an upbeat character and [Rose] was living a kind of bleak existence. The playing of it wasn't the hard part but the going home with her," Adams recollects. "I am used to going home with people with a ton of energy. You have spent the day feeling bad and then you get home and you have got to pull yourself out of it. That was a new challenge for me. Ugh. I don't know if I can ever play a depressed person again. This was hard! And we were in New Mexico when it was wintery and the whole thing was just sort of gray."