By Fred Topel | Image property of Walt Disney Pictures.
When actors do voicework, they only have to worry about fitting in with the animated world. In Enchanted, many actors had to continue playing a cartoon character in their live-action performance. Amy Adams voiced Giselle, the quintessential Disney heroine, and then played a live-action Giselle transported to modern day New York.
Amy Adams Animated About Enchanted
"When I first read the script, I felt like I knew who she was and I felt that it was something I understood, oddly enough," said Adams. "I think that I've always been attracted to characters who are positive and who come from a very innocent place. I think there's a lot of room for discovery in those characters and that's something I always have fun playing. And I didn't treat it like it was a joke. I treated it like it was Chekov and maybe they sensed my sincerity."
Giselle learns the ways of the real world, though never loses her magical powers or optimism. As such, Adams had to carefully track the character arc while shooting out of sequence.
"It's always challenging when you're shooting a film. Shooting things out of order and keeping continuity on all levels is always for me the most challenging thing. In this character in particular, we paid really close attention to how her emotions tracked and her different levels of vulnerability and her physicality was something we tracked very closely."
Enchanted
Enchanted
Enchanted
The legacy of Disney heroines is long and rich, but Adams did not have to do extensive research. She's a girl. "I wish I could say that I spent hours in front of them but the truth is that I had done so much of that in my childhood and my teenage years that I already knew them so well. There was no need to study. So if anything, I kind of tried to avoid them because I didn't want to do an imitation of one of the previous princesses. I wanted to create a new character."
Giselle spends much of the film in the big white dress of her animated wedding, which caused some interesting practical issues in the real world. "Any scene where I had the white dress was grueling. It weighed about 45 pounds and the entire weight was on my hips so occasionally it felt like I was in traction. To allow me to sit down, they had to get these big sort of crash mats is what they're called, these big blankets and laid them out in the middle of the street. I would basically fill up the whole street and I would lie back. I often played. I acted weird. I would lay back and then sit up as though I was rising from the dead. It was fun."
Enchanted is out in theaters now.
For stills, posters, trailer, review and more movie info, go to the
Enchanted
Movie Page.
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