Good girls finish first

The Disney film “Enchanted” asks what would happen if a princess fell down a well that led from her animated, Technicolor fairy tale world to the real New York City.

The junket for the Disney film “Enchanted” asked what would happen if a princess fell down a well that led to a suite at the Beverly Hilton, where she was made to do a lot of promotion for a Disney movie called “Enchanted.”

The junket, needless to say, had more concerned-looking women in black, wearing wireless headsets. But in the middle of both was the poised and cheerful Amy Adams.

Adams, more than ever, seems an actress on the verge. Including “Enchanted,” a romantic comedy in which she steals the heart of a divorce lawyer played by “Grey’s Anatomy’s” Patrick Dempsey, Adams has a co-starring role in Mike Nichols’ upcoming “Charlie Wilson’s War” and plays a nun in “Doubt,” the film adaptation of the John Patrick Shanley play.

For Adams, 33, all of this momentum -- “Enchanted,” which opened Wednesday, is earning her unprecedented reviews -- follows her gate-crashing appearance at the 2006 Oscars, where she was nominated for supporting actress in the tiny indie film “Junebug.”

“Who is that, again?” viewers of the telecast that night no doubt wondered.

“That” was Adams, who was still living in the starter West Hollywood apartment she’d rented after moving here from Minneapolis, having cut her professional teeth in dinner theater, Broadway-style performances, eight shows a week.

Reflecting on it all, surrounded by the apparatus of Hollywood, she said: “I sometimes feel like a bird on the wind, where I’ve just got my wings out, I’m letting it take me. It’s good but I think that as I get older I’ve gotta learn how to flap my wings, kind of.”

She was wearing a white robe over a blue dress, lest her lunch get on her clothes before a series of on-camera interviews. Her rosy cheeks conveyed Snow White; her lap conveyed her 3-month-old rescue puppy, Sadie. The suite conveyed hair maintenance equipment for the management of Adams’ strawberry blond tresses.

Against romantic comedy queens Julia Roberts or Jennifer Aniston, Adams is more of a throwback to Hollywood good girls of the past, such as Doris Day, Jane Wyman and perhaps Audrey Hepburn. This might have something to do with her roots in musical theater, the post-high school years in Minneapolis dinner theater.

It was in Minneapolis that a movie role first found her -- the 1999 mockumentary “Drop Dead Gorgeous,” about a Minnesota beauty pageant. Adams subsequently moved to L.A., working only two days as a waitress, she said.

Her first big breakthrough role came as a candy striper in braces who falls hook, line and sinker for con artist Frank Abagnale (Leonardo DiCaprio) in Steven Spielberg’s “Catch Me If You Can.” But the part didn’t exactly catapult her up call sheets; that happened after “Junebug,” which gave more heft to the dapple-cheeked innocence and endearing credulity she displayed in the Spielberg movie. Directed by Phil Morrison, “Junebug” is about an art dealer (Embeth Davidtz) journeying to rural North Carolina to meet her in-laws for the first time, who include the giddy, deeply religious and very pregnant Ashley.

As played by Adams, Ashley is self-delusional, hilarious and tragic, a conduit for the movie’s bigger themes of loss and connection. A less intelligent actress might have turned Ashley into something that felt more like an impression than a performance. But “Junebug” showed how thoroughly Adams can inhabit a role, so much so that it’s a wonder to discover she actually grew up not in the South but in Colorado, in a big Mormon family.

Adams says her parents left the church after their divorce. “It wasn’t like a lifestyle for us, at least it never felt like a lifestyle,” she said. “It just felt like somewhere we went on Sunday, and I had a lot of friends there, and, you know, we talked about God and religion, but it was still very Sunday school.”

In fact, she says, it was in playing Ashley in “Junebug” that she really came to understand what religious faith meant. “It’s like I suddenly understood religion for the first time in my life during that shoot,” she said. “I totally understood faith. I understood the need to believe, and why it’s so important.”

When “Junebug” got into the Sundance Film Festival in 2005 and won the actress a special jury prize there, Adams was on the verge of quitting L.A. and the pursuit of movie and TV work. She felt adrift, unhappy in the work she was getting. The final straw: Her role on a CBS drama called “Dr. Vegas” (starring Rob Lowe as a casino medical man), was cut from series regular to guest spot.

Adams wondered if it was time to go to New York to try theater. “I wasn’t happy, and that’s not in my nature, not to be happy.”

Indeed, Adams is extremely happy -- cartoonishly happy -- in “Enchanted.” So happy that, in the movie’s naked city, she seems seriously damaged. Then again, she’s a fairy tale princess, Giselle. “Enchanted,” in this way, has the feel of “Princess Bride” or “Splash”; here, a princess leaves her fairy-tale world and steals the heart of a widower with a young daughter, while she’s also being pursued by a Prince Charming and his evil mother, played by Susan Sarandon.

“Enchanted” is cuter than cute but wouldn’t work if Adams wasn’t so convincing. Lost on the streets of Manhattan in her billowing ball gown, she could easily be mistaken for certifiable, or at least an exhibitionist, but the actress wears down our defenses and makes us believe, finally, that she’s for real.

Adams says she also has long grappled with the image of being so nice it’s nauseating. “I think for a long time in my life I fought to be a much more interesting person. Because it wasn’t rewarded to be cheerful. People found it annoying. Or they thought you were dumb, that’s the other misconception.”

The innate goodness, though, makes Adams a powerful presence for a director who understands how to riff on the wholesome innocence she naturally projects. Asked if she’s looking to branch out from the more virginal roles that have gotten her this far, Adams said cautiously, “I guess I’m not that self-examining at this point. I just don’t want to curse the blessings that are on me today.”

paul.brownfield@latimes.com