Amy Adams’ Real-Life Fairytale

Amy Adams loves to dress up. She donned a poufy princess dress in "Enchanted," and a drab nun's habit in "Doubt." But whether she's wearing a glamorous gown or a sharp pantsuit, she clearly knows how to work the red carpet. Still, the 34-year-old admits that she hasn't fully adjusted to being a Hollywood golden girl in the latest issue of W magazine.

Take the recent Academy Awards for example. Amy's multi-colored Fred Leighton necklace was praised as much as her Oscar-nominated turn in "Doubt." But the actress' mind was elsewhere.

"I just was so reflective the whole evening on how I came to be sitting in that room," she tells W's Jenny Comita. "At one point my fiance was like, 'You feel distant.' And I said, 'I am! I can't even talk to you!' I was there at the Oscars thinking, 'What if I never left the Gap?' "

See the complete W photo shoot with Amy Adams

It's hard to imagine Amy working retail, but that's where she developed her sense of style. Scoring a job at Gap was "a huge deal, because with the 40-percent-off discount I could finally buy things that weren't on sale!"

When things weren't on sale, Amy got creative: "If I didn't get things on clearance, I wasn't getting them. I would make fake Guess jeans by buying a cheaper brand with a triangle label and then cutting it off so you could still see the triangle outline. It's so sad that I did that!"

Click here to read Amy's retail to red carpet fairytale, or pick up the May issue of W magazine, on newsstands April 21. But for now, enjoy these gorgeous photos of Amy by Craig McDean.