LOS ANGELES -- Behind every great man, there's a woman hurling something at him.
Well, not quite. But there is an undeniable, shall we say, physical hardiness to the mother, girlfriend and sisters of pugilist Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) in The Fighter. Meaning that in the boxing drama, the odd piece of cookware flies amid all the insults, accusations and recriminations.
Hardly the arena you expect to find adorable, perky Amy Adams in. So what is one of Hollywood's pre-eminent sweethearts doing tangling on the working-class streets of Lowell, Mass.?
At first, even director David O. Russell didn't seem certain she belonged.
"When I got the role, David informed me that I looked like a girl who couldn't punch," says Adams, "which made me want to punch him.
"So I actually took just a couple boxing lessons and that was fun with Mark's trainer who was fantastic and then we just did some fight choreography. I think it was about not being afraid of hurting anybody. That was my biggest concern. I didn't want to hurt the girls that I was fighting with. I wasn't afraid of getting hurt myself.
"When I was younger, my sister thought it was funny to pretend to punch me in the face because my mom was concerned about my teeth falling out. They were loose for a long time, and she knocked out my teeth. So I've always been a little afraid of fake punches."
Russell, however, never doubted why Adams wanted the role -- or whether she could deliver.
"I knew that she was eager to break type for herself in the sense that she had played mostly very sunny women and she was very eager to play someone against type and I knew she was going to kill it."
In the film, which is now in theatres, Adams is Charlene Fleming, a bartender who inspired and prodded Ward to get out from under the thumb of his domineering mother, Alice (Melissa Leo) and out of the shadow of his drug-addled older brother and trainer, Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale).
"Charlene is a tough bitch, you know. And Amy is very fierce," says Russell, who once got into a scrap himself with George Clooney on the set of Three Kings. "But Amy also brings a great deal of emotion in her eyes, so you have that great cocktail that I find so interesting."
That ferocity manifests itself in a number of scenes in which Charlene and Ward's family -- specifically his big-haired brood of sisters -- clash.
Says Adams, "They were like 'She was trash.' ... Do I think it's fair from Charlene's perspective? No. She was just a girl trying to make good. Trying to deal with what she had."
Adds Wahlberg, "She's a sweetheart."
"She is a sweetheart," Adams says. "What struck me about Charlene is that you had all these huge personalities and she never once was like 'Let me tell you my side of the story.' She never did. She always was content to sit in the background.
"She was not about drawing attention to herself. She was really happy that Micky's story was being told and she was very supportive of that."
And for his part, Wahlberg, who also produced The Fighter, says he knew Adams had the required moxie.
"David always says that she doesn't seem like the girl who can throw a punch, but she reminds me of so many girls in my neighbourhood. She looks like an Irish Catholic, tough, no-nonsense kind of girl. I saw that immediately. (But) they're not quite as pretty as Amy, the girls in my neighbourhood."
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