Joey Lauren Adams

About Joey Lauren Adams

Joey Lauren Adams (born January 9, 1968) is an American actress who has appeared in over 30 films. She is perhaps best known for her roles in the films of Kevin Smith, particularly Chasing Amy. Adams was born in North Little Rock, Arkansas. Her father was a lumber yard owner. She moved to Hollywood in 1988.

Adams's first movie breakthrough role came in 1993 in Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused, a film which also starred Ben Affleck and Matthew McConaughey. She was in the film Mallrats which was her first Kevin Smith movie. After that, she did another Smith movie playing Alyssa Jones in the 1997 film Chasing Amy, opposite Ben Affleck. This role brought her a lot of attention for her portrayal of a lesbian who falls for a man. Director Kevin Smith wrote and directed the film, which was largely inspired by his relationship with Adams herself.[citation needed]

Her performance earned her both the 1997 Chicago Film Critics Award and Las Vegas Film Critics Society Award for "Most Promising Actress" and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture—Comedy/Musical. Adams also contributed the song "Alive" to the soundtrack of Chasing Amy, performing it in one of the scenes of the film. She also has appeared in two other View Askew productions, Mallrats (1995) and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001) briefly reprising the role of Chasing Amy's Alyssa in the latter. She reprised the role again, in voice form only, for Clerks: The Lost Scene, featured on the Clerks X DVD.