By GLENN GARVIN

BIG SCREEN

Daybreakers (R) — In the near future, a scientist (Ethan Hawke) tries to find a cure for a plague that has turned the bulk of the human population into vampires, making the remaining few people priceless sources of nourishment for the bloodsuckers.

Leap Year (PG) — Amy Adams stars as a woman tired of waiting for her longtime boyfriend (Matthew Goode) to propose, so she hatches a scheme to make sure they spend Feb. 29 in Ireland, where tradition allows women to propose. Directed by Anand Tucker (Shopgirl).

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After scoring an Oscar nod for her co-starring role with Meryl Streep in Doubt, Amy Adams is back on the big screen with the Academy Award-winning legend. But this time, Adams doesn’t have a single scene with Streep.

In Julie and Julia, Adams takes on the real-life role of a woman who cooked (and blogged) her way through every recipe in Julia Child’s masterpiece, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Parade.com’s Jeanne Wolf found out why Amy’s most memorable moment took place off of the set—and how she almost gave up on her acting career.

Take two on her engagement.
“I got engaged the night before we wrapped Julie and Julia [to her boyfriend of six years, Darren La Gallo]. It was funny because I was actually running lines from the script in my head while we were taking this romantic carriage ride in Central Park. I felt really bad for Darren. I was like, ‘You should get a re-do because you were cheated.’ All I was thinking about was my last day at work.”

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Why she loves him.
“Darren gives up a lot and gives me a lot. He comes to visit me on set. He draws me a bath when I get home. He’s an actor and also an artist and he sends me drawings. Just lots of sweet little things to keep us connected.”

And that includes their pets, Pippy and Sadie.
“We went to a Chihuahua rescue place and I found Pippy. I like to rescue dogs. It sounds so noble to say ‘rescuing a dog,’ I guess, but I like to adopt them. We also have Sadie, another Chihuahua that we rescued as well. My fiance saw it in a pet store where a woman had saved it from the pound and he just brought it home.”

See Photos of Stars and Their Famous Pets

Duplicating Julie’s culinary skills.
“Absolutely not. The answer was clear. I would have started on Julia Child’s recipes and given up on about day two. I don’t have that kind of patience. The amazing thing is Julie was cooking everything in this teeny kitchen where there was barely room to move around.”

She isn’t spending a lot of time in the kitchen.
“Right now, I’m working a lot. So I tend to be limited to like soup and popcorn and nachos. I wouldn’t call myself a good cook. I can follow a recipe, but sometimes my improvisation gets me in trouble. I’m creative and taking liberties doesn’t always turn out that well.”

Find Out What Celebrity Chefs Are Cooking Up For the Road

Facing the truth behind a lobster dinner.
“Julie had a panic attack when she had to cook a lobster because they’re alive. I’d never killed one before. I always have just eaten lobster and not thought about it. I had to fix one in cooking class and plunge the poor living thing into boiling water. I haven’t eaten lobster since.”

Rewriting her life.
“Julie and Julia is really about reinventing yourself and what that takes. I’ve gone through that process of re-evaluating things. For a while, I was seriously considering giving up acting. My life lacked balance because I was too focused on a result as opposed to enjoying the process. I just had to get back into enjoying myself.”

The upside of struggling.
“There were times when I didn’t work. There were times when I was flat broke, just like anyone else. You go through ups and downs in life. And, right now, I’m on an up. I’m going to enjoy it and have fun and make the most of it.”

Apparently, there are buttons even Bruno won’t push. The makers of Sasha Baron Cohen’s new film have decided to excise a scene making fun of Michael Jackson, according to Total Film.

In the scene, Bruno calls Michael’s sister, LaToya, and makes fun of her brother’s voice and tries to get his phone number. The scene was in pre-press screenings but won’t make the final print.

• What’s cooler than playing one famous real gangster? Playing two in quick succession.

Fresh off his part as Baby Face Nelson in Michael Mann’s epic Public Enemies, Stephen Graham jumps into the extremely juicy role of Al Capone in Martin Scorsese’s upcoming TV series, “Boardwalk Empire”.

Graham, a Brit who also made a memorable turn in the jarring This is England, talks with Empire about maintaining a New York accent: “I spend all my time with the teamsters, the drivers, because they’re all from New York. I hang around with them and eat Italian food.”

• Amy Adams joins an already strong cast in the upcoming “The Fighter”, according to the MTV Movies Blog. Mark Wahlberg is playing true-life boxer “Irish” Micky Ward, while Christian Bale is Ward’s trainer and brother. Adams is a tough-as-nails paramour for Micky, who won the world welterweight title in London and is well-known for his three epic fights with Arturo Gatti.

• Diane Keaton was injured on the set of the film Morning Glory. She bumped her head, but she is OK, according to AccessAtlanta.

However, the circumstances surrounding the injury have me worried. Apparently she was filming a scene in a sumo suit. This can’t end well.

Even Ben Stiller looks bored out of his mind in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, and he got paid several million dollars to star in it. Sitting through the movie puts you in a similar state of mind, except you’re the one paying the money.

Not that we’re singling Stiller out. Pretty much no one involved with this listless, rote sequel to the 2006 smash hit seems to have put much effort into it. After all, the original made half a billion dollars at the box office the world over. With numbers like that, a built-in audience for a sequel is guaranteed to line up on opening weekend.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Not since Charlton Heston told a “dirty ape” what to do with his stinking paws has an actor been so tormented by a monkey.

While not exactly the kind of abject captivity that Heston endured in “Planet of the Apes,” the slapping match Ben Stiller went through with Crystal, the Capuchin monkey — for a second time — was torture enough.

“I really dislike the monkey,” Stiller said during an interview with co-stars Hank Azaria and Amy Adams at the Smithsonian Castle in Washington, where some of Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian was filmed.

“There’s no way to feel great about having a monkey slap your face on any level,” Stiller continued, adding that the trainer would be off-camera shouting “Get him! Get him! Hit him harder! Hit him harder! And then they give it a treat.”

Azaria could tell Stiller was dreading the scene because he arrived on the set “despondent.”

“I’ve never seen you so sad that day and nothing could cajole you out of it,” Azaria told Stiller. “It was really the depths of depression over ‘monkey day.’”

“‘Monkey day’ is never a good day,” Stiller replied. “You start to question your life and your career.”

Stiller says it was a much better being slapped by Adams in the movie because “there’s a kiss that comes before and after.”

Adams says that was the one scene that made her laugh so hard she ruined take after take, which meant “we had to start over and I was slapping and laughing and kissing and laughing” (which Stiller quipped “happens a lot in my marriage”).

While Adams and Azaria say they loved playing with the monkey on their own, they weren’t without their own complaints: Both hated their wardrobe.

As Egyptian ruler Kahmunrah, Azaria wears a tunic that other characters ridicule throughout the film as a skirt. Azaria says “it was highly uncomfortable, very binding,” which prevented him from being able to sit down. They also gave him a codpiece that was stuffed with cardboard and metal to make it bigger, but more painful.

His headdress started out as metal and Azaria says it “weighed more than the table we’re sitting at now.” The crew had to keep redesigning it to make it lighter.

Adams, who played aviator Amelia Earhart, had to contend with the crew redesigning her jodhpurs so they’d be tighter and tighter. She says the breeches were made of wool with “absolutely no stretch,” which made them hard to run in, adding that she “ripped more than one pair in the back.”

Despite the suffering, Stiller’s character, museum guard Larry Daley, still learned the key to happiness by the end of the movie: friendship, not money.

Stiller’s personal key to happiness?

“Sugar and being in the moment and maybe just a little bit of alcohol.”

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian opens nationwide Friday.