Amy Adams says she once helped save a man’s life after he suffered a stab wound to the neck, relying on first-aid knowledge she picked up while preparing for a short-lived television role more than 20 years ago.
The six-time Oscar nominee, known for films including Enchanted, Arrival, and American Hustle, shared the story on the June 24 episode of the SmartLess podcast with Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett. Adams said the experience showed that a little practical training can matter in a real emergency.
The incident happened in Santa Monica, California, after Adams had finished eating at a favorite restaurant with her husband Darren Le Gallo, their daughter Aviana, and her father Richard Adams. As they were leaving, they were suddenly met with panic outside.
“We were in Santa Monica and coming out of our favorite restaurant,” Adams recounted on the podcast. “And these people were screaming, and a guy was walking, and they’re yelling, ‘He’s dying.’ And my husband’s like, ‘That’s blood.'”
Realizing immediately that the situation was critical, Adams told her husband to stay back with their daughter while she and her father ran toward the injured man.
When they reached him, they found a man losing a large amount of blood from a serious wound to his neck as the people around him struggled to respond.
“He was bleeding and his friends were freaking out,” Adams recalled.
Fortunately, they had beach towels with them, which Adams and her father used to apply pressure to the wound. She said she became intensely focused, concentrating not only on slowing the bleeding but also on keeping the man calm until paramedics arrived.
“I’m sitting there somehow going, ‘You need to calm your pulse rate. Take a deep breath in,'” Adams shared. “I literally was just so focused. I was like, ‘The more you struggle, the faster you’re going to bleed. Just lay down. Let’s elevate this.'”
Asked how she was able to stay composed in such a traumatic moment, Adams said the answer goes back to an unexpected part of her early career. Before fully committing to acting, she had considered going into emergency medicine because she felt she was “good in a crisis,” though she later changed direction after finding higher-level math difficult.
That background later overlapped with acting when she landed a role in the 2004 CBS medical drama Dr. Vegas, a short-lived series starring Rob Lowe. Adams played nurse Alice Doherty and said she shadowed an emergency room doctor while preparing for the part.
While preparing for that role, Adams learned practical lessons about handling trauma, applying pressure to wounds, and calming patients that stayed with her for years — and ultimately helped her respond when a stranger’s life was at risk.
The man survived, thanks in part to the quick actions of Adams and her father. Then, a year later, she unexpectedly came face-to-face with him again.
She said she was out at another restaurant when someone approached her table and began talking about the stabbing.
“A guy walks up to me in the restaurant and he’s like, ‘I heard a story that you and your dad were on the scene of a guy getting stabbed,'” Adams said. “And I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s so funny you heard that story.’ And then he showed me the scar on his neck. And I was like, ‘Oh my god, it’s you.’ And it was him, and he was like all teary and he had his son with him. It was so crazy.”