Amy Adams Learned A Lot Growing Up With Six Siblings

My first guest tonight is a five-time Oscar nominee who has starred in Enchanted, The Fighter, and American Hustle. Her latest film is Nocturnal Animals. Please welcome the lovely and talented Amy Adams. Hi. It's nice to be on. You've never met before. This is nice. I didn't have a chance to talk to you backstage. I usually do that before a guest is on here, but hello. I'm Stephen Colbert. Hello, I'm Amy Adams. It's nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, too. What is that? My daughter wrote you a note. She's backstage, and she wrote you this note. Hi, I'm Aviana. Did I say that correctly? Hi, I'm Aviana. Nice to meet you. And then she drew you a little picture here of a flower. That's nice. Okay, I'll rewrite that. Hi, Aviana. Aw. Did I get it right? Yes. Back at ya. And then I'll do like, the only thing I know how to draw is Snoopy. She'll take Snoopy. She loves Snoopy. There you go, there's my Snoopy. There you go. All right, I've made a friend. Awesome. That's pretty sweet. Do I get to keep this? Yeah, yeah. You give this to her daughter. We'll keep it right here. We'll sort it out. I was talking to John a second ago about whether he's coming to Thanksgiving dinner with me this year. Do you, are you all set for Thanksgiving? Are you going home? I have plans, going to some relative's house. Okay. You're a big family, right? Yeah, lots of different choices. How many kids, how many family do you grow up in? Seven kids, including me. So, family of seven. I understand you're a... One of 11. Yeah, one of 11. Yeah, yeah, it's not a contest, but I'm winning. Where do you fall? That's very important in big families especially, you know, placement is destiny. Where do you fall? Middle. Oh, trouble. Yeah, trouble. That means I gotta wait a lot. I think it's a desperate need for attention. We were all desperate for attention, let's be honest. One of seven kids. Well, I was desperate for seconds. Yeah, oh my God, right? There wasn't food. I, it's, I never ate fast enough to get seconds. And I still... No, it's prison eating. It's this action right here. Yeah, and still to this day, if someone tries to go after my food, I get kind of mad. Like my husband, we know we have to like, cut the food in half, you know? I'm like, if you want some, here, that's your third. There is no like, if he reaches over, it's like he's really violated some pact. Did your mom have a rule for like, how you like cut the cookie and how they shared the cookie? Because we had a very specific rule on how to do it. Well, it sounds like your mom was very, no, my mom was- Whoever cut the cookie, the other person got to pick the half. Ah. So that's Solomon right there. So we were getting out, we were getting out like protractors and calipers to make sure the platonic ideal of the cut like that. No, we were a little more Lord of the Flies than like, you know, one of the biblical books. Like it was a little more. So is your husband from a big family? No, he's just one of two. So my wife is one of two also, and our big families can kind of swamp the spouse's family at family gatherings. How do you invite him in? Like, how did you introduce him to your family? We'd been dating for two weeks and I thought, there's something about him, I really like him. And I was like, well, before I can figure out if this is going to go any further, I might as well. I brought him to my sister's wedding and he survived. What, wait, what number date was this? Clean, you know, two weeks of hanging out. Okay. My daughter's backstage. I understand. But still, just two weeks in and you take him to the family wedding. I did, I took him to my sister's wedding. Just put handcuffs on him at that point. I know, right? He survived and he survived in a wonderful way. They all like him and he sat through like the two hour sing-along and anybody who can put up with my family sing-along. Is your family to sing-along? Yeah. Do they have good voices? Yeah, actually. Because you've got a lovely voice. It's a decent voice, yeah. You have a lovely voice. My family loves to sing and everyone thinks they've got a great voice. Yeah, I know how that goes too. You know what really helps? All the wine. Oh, yeah. So are you gonna go, so where, like, where are you, are you gonna go meet your family, his family? His family, this year. Okay, okay. Yeah, we kind of try to switch years. All right. Yeah. Did you, as a kid, did you like, big family car trips are really hard to do. Yeah. How did your family handle seven kids, one car? One car, like a Ford Econo, what's it called, like Econoliner or something? Econoliner, yeah, exactly, yeah. And we all would, like, lay on the seats. My dad would leave at, like, three o'clock in the morning to go to my grandmother's house for Thanksgiving and the kids would all lay on, one on a seat, one on the floor, two in the back over the suitcases, they built something. And then there was, I know, can you imagine, like, how much trouble we'd get in nowadays? And then a gymnastics mat spread across the top where I would sleep. My mom would do the same thing. She would put crib mattress in the back of the station wagon and she would stack us like cordwood, like three this way and then three that way. And then she would roll up the windows tight in the middle of the winter and light up a Kent and just smoke the entire way there. That's amazing. We were like, my brother and sister would say, we never have to be embalmed because as a child, my mother, Hickory, smoked us. That's exactly, that's amazing. We were absolutely gonna last forever. See, that's something, a lot of people who don't come from big families don't understand, sort of, like, the configuration of the road trip. Safety, schmafety, we got there. Exactly. Okay, you have a new movie called Nocturnal Animals. I do. And it's directed by Tom Ford, the designer, who is also a brilliant director. And you play a very, sort of, sad, somewhat unlikable character, Susan. Well, I'll go with sad. I learned to like her, but I get what you're saying about it. You have to, as the actor or actress, you have to like your character, right? Absolutely, but yeah, she's kind of this, sort of, privileged person who's, sort of, looking at her life and not really liking the choices she's made that has led her to this particular unhappiness. And your husband, your ex-husband in the movie has written a book. Yes. And sent it to you. Yes. And you spent a lot of the movie reading the book. Reading, yes, sir. And brilliantly. Thank you. I really believe you know how to read. It's really, there's a lot more happening. Oh, sorry. I'm like, I'm sorry, I just ran over you there. That's all right, that's okay. I was like, there's a lot more than me just reading. No, no problem, yeah. I just, suddenly I thought of all these people going like, she just reads for the whole movie. No, no, no, no. No, but you're doing a lot with your face while you're reading the book. Yes, I do. You're earning it, you're earning it right up here. I'm earning it, earning it. We have a clip right here of you talking to, is this a friend of yours, an assistant of yours? An assistant, yes, sir. Explaining your emotional state, Jim. You know me, I never sleep. My ex-husband used to call me a nocturnal animal. What ex-husband? I didn't know you had an ex-husband, since when? Couple of years in graduate school. It's weird, I've been thinking about him a lot lately, and then recently he sent me this book that he's written, and it's violent, and it's sad, and he titled it Nocturnal Animals, and he dedicated it to me. Did you love him? Yeah, I loved him. We gotta take a little break. We'll be right back with more Amy Adams.