BIOGRAPHY

 

(NOTE: Any and all of this information could be wrong, since I got it all off the Internet.  More – and possibly more accurate – information will probably come next week, after I go to see Enchanted April; I’m assuming her bio in the playbill will at least provide more complete information about her theatrical history.  For right now, I’m just cobbling together stuff I’ve found on various websites.  This page is hereby disclaimed.)

 

Jane Adams was born on April 1,1965, in Wheaton, Illinois.  Growing up, she did a lot of community theater, but her professional aspirations didn’t originally lie with drama; upon graduating, she first enrolled in Seattle’s Cornish Institute as a political science major.  However, she took some drama classes there, and eventually moved to New York to study drama – at Juilliard, no less.  She landed a few roles in TV movies, TV shows (she guested on Family Ties twice, as two different characters), and had a decent-sized role in the film Vital Signs.  However, her early career was mostly marked by her success onstage.  Soon after graduating, she landed a role on Broadway, in Paul Rudnick’s comedy I Hate Hamlet, for which she won an Outer Critics Cirle Award and was nominated for a Drama Desk.  Quickly making a name for herself, she was active in New York theater in the next several years, including the role of Mary Warren in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.  Her most notable Broadway success, however, was in the role of Sheila Birling in J. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls.  For that, she won a Tony, as well as a Drama Desk Award and a nomination for an Outer Critics Circle Award. 

Following her stint in New York, she eventually moved to L.A. in order to further her career as a movie actress – which sounds like a practical decision, when money concerns are taken into account.  Either way, for a few years she hovered in the background of most of the films she was in, taking on small supporting roles in popular films such as I Love Trouble and Father of the Bride II.  As she began to make more of a name for herself in Hollywood as well, her parts grew – if not necessarily bigger – more interesting; she’s all but cornered the market on a certain type of neurotic waif. 

Looking at it from a certain angle, one might call Todd Solondz’ Happiness Jane’s breakthrough role.  Joy Jordan – the sweet, sad heroine of this black comedy – is certainly the biggest role she’s played onscreen, as well as one of the best performances she’s given; and as Happiness was unquestionably one of the most controversial films of 1998, it received a fair amount of publicity.  However, the film – in its attempt to humanize the pedophile around whom much of the plot centers, as well as its deliberate attempts to shock and, at times, revolt its audience – was simply too much for many moviegoers to handle, and it dwindled to what might generously be called a minor cult attraction.  On her part, Jane started getting bigger parts from then on, but almost entire in independent films.  In Songcatcher she bucked typecasting in her portrayal of a gentle, calm (the word can’t be emphasized enough here) schoolteacher in the Appalachian mountains in 1907; then, jumping right back into type and then some, she took on the magnificently caffeinated role of Clair in The Anniversary Party, directed by costars Alan Cumming and Jennifer Jason Leigh.  Anniversary Party was an interesting project, written by Cumming and Leigh specifically for their actor friends, and as such the roles are written to play to the actors’ strengths and to reflect certain aspects of their personalities.  One hopes Clair isn’t too accurate a reflection of Jane’s real-life persona; if so, we hope she’s managed to get a hold of a good Valium prescription since then.

It seemed as though Jane’s fortune as a movie actress was steadily increasing; however, just after 2002’s Orange County, she seemed to disappear off Hollywood’s radar for awhile.  She was slated to appear in two upcoming movies – Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation and an indie flick about a girl rock band titled Prey for Rock and Roll – both of which she apparently dropped out of mid-production, as her roles were taken over by other actresses.  For a year and a half or so, she appeared to have given up acting.  But she’s back on the scene now, currently starring in an off-Broadway production of Enchanted April, and set to appear in the next Charlie Kaufman film (he must really like her – go Charlie!), with the unlikely title of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.  Hopefully, she’s got a decent-sized role in this, which is almost sure to be a box-office winner after Kaufman’s two previous films, Adaptation and Being John Malkovich.  She deserves to be a legitimate celebrity; let’s hope this does it for her.

 

RANDOM, LARGELY UNINTERESTING TRIVIA FACTOIDS WHICH ARE BEING INCLUDED SOLELY BECAUSE I CAME ACROSS THEM IN MY ENDLESS BORING “Jane Adams” and “actress” SEARCHES ON YAHOO AND I’M GOING TO PUT THEM TO USE SOMEHOW, DAMMIT

 

-Before becoming an actress, she worked for awhile as a nursery school teacher.  I find this to be a very cute image.

 

-Her first theatrical role was in a junior high school production of Pinocchio.

 

-Upon completion of the filming of Wonder Boys, she gave Curtis Hanson a snow globe with a miniature skyline of the city of Pittsburgh, where the movie was filmed, inside.  He mentioned it specifically as one of the most thoughtful presents he’d ever gotten.

 

-For some random party about which I know nothing except that there is a webpage devoted to pictures of it, she baked a “psychedelic cake.”  I am not clear on whether this adjective merely refers to the Day-Glo colors of its layers, or whether mind-altering substances were included in the recipe, but a picture of it is up in the photo gallery, just for the hell of it.  It’s not the most appetizing-looking thing, which perhaps argues that it is indeed a special recipe.

 

-Has read David Malouf’s An Imaginary Life.  (...I care. Shut up. ;))

-When Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle wrapped, she, along with Jennifer Beals and Jennifer Jason Leigh, gave costar Gwyneth Paltrow a copy of The Bell Jar with an inscription saying that Paltrow needed to play Plath in a movie at some point down the line. Either that was uncannily prescient, or it gave birth to the idea.