On Wednesday, December 3, the Mean Girls actress rang in her milestone 40th trip around the sun, one day after stepping out in New York City alongside co-star Sydney Sweeney to celebrate the release of their new thriller together, The Housemaid.
It has been a busy year for the star, who in addition to releasing The Housemaid, out December 19, is also celebrating the release — and success — of another movie, the musical drama The Testament of Ann Lee, which is out December 25, and has already earned her Oscar buzz after its festival circuit.
Speaking on CBS Sunday Mornings on the November 30 episode, Amanda, who lives in a farm in upstate New York with her husband Thomas Sadoski and their two kids, Nina, eight, and Thomas, five, reflected on her work in the latter musical and her career overall.
"It's like, I worked my ass off in this specific experience, and I worked my ass off throughout my career, and I've stayed true to who I am," she said. "I've definitely changed, and evolved, and become a better person. Do I still make mistakes? Uh-huh, yeah. Do I still make bad choices? Yeah! But I'm human, and I'm, like, doing the best I can. And I'm nice. And I'm [expletive] nice! 'Cause there's no other reason not to be."
Scroll below to see Amanda through the years, in some of her most memorable roles.
Amanda got her start in acting as many do, on a soap opera. Here she is in 2002, aged 17, opposite Micah Alberti as a character named Joni Stafford. She was on the show for five episodes.
Amanda's very next role after All My Children, her very first movie and her big break, was as the iconic, albeit ditzy Karen Smith on the Tina Fey 2004 comedy Mean Girls, which also starred Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, and Lacey Chabert.
Amanda's next iconic role came only four years later, as Sophie in Mamma Mia!, starring alongside Meryl Streep, Christine Baranski, Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgård, Colin Firth, Julie Waters, and Dominic Cooper. She reprised the role ten years later, in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again in 2018.
Between Mamma Mia! and one of her other hugely memorable roles, as Elizabeth Holmes in the mini-series The Dropout, Amanda accrued over 40 acting credits, including from other popular films like Jennifer's Body, Dear John, Letters to Juliet, Les Misérables, and Mank, for which she earned an Oscar nomination. For The Dropout, which was released in 2022, she won a Critics Choice Award, an Emmy, and a Golden Globe, among others.
Though this Mona Fastvold directed film (co-written by The Brutalist Oscar winner Brady Corbet, her partner) has yet to open to the public, Amanda is already drumming up Oscar buzz. The film follows Ann Lee, the founding leader of the Shaker Movement whose followers come to see her as the female Christ, and the establishment of her utopian society and the Shakers' worship through song and dance.
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