Joey Lauren Adams was born and raised in North Little Rock, Arkansas, in a working-class household. Adams showed an early aptitude for acting, with a bit part in The Exorcist II: The Heretic at age 9. As she aged into early adulthood, Adams began to develop her distinctive voice, which at times helped her secure roles, but at others became a liability in the auditioning process. In the early '90s, she snagged a few TV roles in Married...with Children and a short-lived spin-off series, before impressing Richard Linklater in an audition for Dazed and Confused, her breakout role.
From 1993 to 1999, Adams was in her halcyon days, stepping into Kevin Smith's View Askewniverse with impressive roles in Mallrats and Chasing Amy, before finally being cast in a big-budget studio film in 1999 with Adam Sandler's Big Daddy. Her charismatic charm and whip-smart line-readings helped her overcome being typecast, acting in over 50 more films and TV shows, including (ahem) some voice roles. Her dramatic work in the 2000s helped show that her acting range extended beyond those '90s coming-of-age movies, and the actress is still landing regular roles to this day.
The following are the ten best Joey Lauren Adams movies, ranked.
10 Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
Long a member of Kevin Smith's recurring cast, Joey Lauren Adams had the unenviable task of playing some of the "straight" characters in his films, and in the case of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, joined a deep, all-star team of actors whose comedy she had to play off. Adams plays Alyssa Jones, one half of a sisterly odd-couple pairing with Renee Humphrey, rounding a zany comedic cast full of Hollywood A-Listers. Adams keeps the film grounded in Kevin Smith's indie roots.
9 Coneheads
1993 was a big year for Adams, with two of her first major motion picture roles in Dazed and Confused and Coneheads. The latter saw her play Christina, a friend of Connie Conehead (Michelle Burke), the daughter of the intergalactic, pointy-headed clan. Adams and Burke would act in both movies together, with Adams ending up with the more successful career despite playing second fiddle to Burke in both films. Adams seemed to fit the tone of '90s comedies better than Burke, and as the decade progressed she was continually cast in coming-of-age roles in comedy movies geared toward teens.
8 The Break-Up
One of Adams' most memorable roles from the 2000s came in The Break-Up, a Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston romantic comedy vehicle. Aniston played Brooke Meyers, who is unlucky in love thanks to a lazy boyfriend who doesn't pick up on basic social cues and isn't willing to work on their relationship. Her closest confidante, Addie, is played hilariously by Adams, often needing to bring Brooke back down to Earth when she plots some hair-brained schemes to get her boyfriend back. As is often the case, Adams provides a sort of avatar for the audience in this film, acting as the voice of reason in an otherwise discombobulated world.
By the film's 2006 release, Adams was back to acting mainly in supporting roles in studio films, while also continuing to do a bunch of work for television and smaller indies, always keeping busy despite having a slightly lower profile than in her '90s it-girl heyday.
7 Big Daddy
Adams landed her most commercially-successful movie role opposite Adam Sandler in the comedy Big Daddy, again playing a more grounded character to reign in the comedic talents of Sandler as Sonny Koufax, a do-nothing law school dropout who ends up with a foundling son on his doorstep. Adams had matured into more adult roles by the film's release in 1999, playing Layla, a lawyer with whom Sonny gets set up on a date, eventually helping him on his quest to become a better parent and keep his son. It's a shame that this was the end of Adams' foray into playing the love interest in rom-coms, as she was perfectly suited to these roles, especially when played opposite an immature male lead.
6 Bio-Dome
One of the '90s great guilty pleasures, Bio-Dome took the buddy comedy to new levels of idiocy, as Bud (Pauly Shore) and Doyle (Stephen Baldwin) try to impress their girlfriends by being more environmentally oriented. Adams plays Monique, Bud's girlfriend who's fed up with his antics. She blends hip and conscientious perfectly, kind of a stick-in-the-mud that inspires the moronic Bud's better sensibilities.
Adams found her way into the role of spurned girlfriend quite often in the '90s, with a period of typecasting that she overcame with smarter roles as she aged into her thirties, but for a time she was a go-to actress for the MTV demographic. Sure, the film only got a 4% rating from critics on aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, but we like to think they missed the point.
5 Blue Caprice
One of Adams' lesser-known roles, Blue Caprice was an indie about the 2002 Washington D.C. sniper attacks, focusing on the complex relationship developed between John Allen Muhammad (Isaiah Washington) and Lee Malvo (Tequan Richmond), the perpetrators, who get coached on firearms by a Tacoma, Washington man played by Tim Blake Nelson.
Adams plays his wife, who grows weary of Muhammad and Malvo when she discovers that Malvo isn't his real son. It's one of Adams' best dramatic movie roles, and a rare opportunity to show her range as a feature actor, something she had become more known for in television roles like Dr. Tracy McConnell on Grey's Anatomy. As Adams' career matured, these types of roles became more frequent for her.
4 Mallrats
Like many of Kevin Smith's '90s films, the male characters in Mallrats seem stuck in their teenage years, collecting comic books and playing video game consoles in their parent's basements, while the women provide the voice of reason and maturity. Adams' character in Mallrats, Gwen, was no different, a sharp-witted femme fatalewho's often terrorized by Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Kevin Smith), no more so than when she's trying on pants in a dressing room and Silent Bob bursts head-first through the wall. Adams provides the yin to these boneheaded boys' yang, along with Shannon Doherty as Rene, two actresses at the peak of their '90s powers.
3 Sequoia
Sequoia was a Sundance Film Festival selection, driven by a young cast and a tinge of the supernatural. The film stars Aly Michalka as Riley, a woman suffering from terminal cancer, who travels to Sequoia National Park to end her life. Joey Lauren Adams plays Riley's mother, Bev, who is unsympathetic to her plight thanks to her preoccupation with her new boyfriend and her hatred for Riley's father.
The film is a touching look at terminal illness and humankind's relationship with nature, as a few characters travel to the General Sherman tree to use it like a wishing well, as it's been thought to have healing powers. The tenderness of the film finds a necessary antagonist in Adams, who proved just as able to play a negative character as the more affable roles from earlier in her career.
2 Chasing Amy
Kevin Smith and Joey Lauren Adams dated briefly in the '90s, with Adams becoming a muse of sorts for the director, even after their relationship had amicably ended. Chasing Amy, though not necessarily autobiographical, was Smith's post-relationship love letter to Adams, casting her in the leading role as a lesbian who attempts to date men. A love triangle develops between her and her suitors, Holden (Ben Affleck) and Banky (Jason Lee). Adams' character, Alyssa, is an empowered woman who inverts the two men's expectations of whom, and what, she should be, bending them to her will rather than vice versa.
1 Dazed and Confused
The moment-in-time that was Dazed and Confused saw a new spate of young actors simultaneously coming into their own. For Adams, it was essentially her first large speaking role, with Richard Linklater harvesting her attitude perfectly for the character of Simone Kerr. Simone, in classic Joey Lauren Adams style, gets shown the door by Randall "Pink" Floyd, who gets into some hanky panky with her friend Jodi (Michelle Burke) — an Adams character spurned once again. In one of the film's many drive 'n' chat scenes, she catches wind of a fellow student gossiping about her and launches into a potty-mouthed tirade, showing she wasn't afraid to play a character with a little edge.
It's fun to imagine being a fly on the wall during the shooting of Dazed and Confused, as it was a jumping-off point for many young actors, all of whom were partying together behind the scenes. Adams recalled, for Vulture, "I was high for the scene on the football field. A lot of us were." Sounds like life certainly imitated art on this unforgettable film set, which remains Joey Lauren Adams' most memorable role 30 years later.
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