One of her generation's most gifted and adaptable actors is Amy Adams. Have you seen "Doubt," where she gave a great performance? She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress because of the subtlety and depth with which she depicted the nuanced character of Sister James. Her run of critically acclaimed performances would continue after this. Her acting abilities are demonstrated in more than only her tragic parts, though.

From Amy Adams and Isla Fisher to Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes, many celebrities are regularly mistaken for one another, despite being unrelated. Now, a study has revealed that these famous faces don't just look alike – they also likely have very similar DNA. Researchers from the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute in Barcelona have revealed that strong facial similarity is associated with shared genetic variants. 'These results will have future implications in forensic medicine - reconstructing the criminal's face from DNA - and in genetic diagnosis - the photo of the patient's face will already give you clues as to which genome he or she has,' said Dr Manel Esteller, senior author of the study. In 2015, researchers revealed that the chance of finding your doppelganger is one in a trillion. Teghan Lucas, a student at the University of Adelaide, conducted the study using a large database of face and body measurements from almost 4,000 individuals, combined with mathematical equations.

In a typical sci-fi movie about extraterrestrials, there are certain kinds of sounds you'd expect to hear: electronic bleeps and bloops, whooshing spaceships, the slithering of slimy aliens, some pew-pew-pew laser blasts. But as anyone who's seen it will tell you, "Arrival" is not a typical sci-fi movie about extraterrestrials. To help create a unique aural feel for the film -- the story of a linguistics professor (Amy Adams) who is recruited by the military to help communicate with mysterious alien visitors -- director Denis Villeneuve turned to a longtime friend and frequent collaborator, sound editor Sylvain Bellemare. The atmospheric, emotionally stirring soundscape Bellemare crafted has now earned him his first Oscar nomination. A native of Montreal, Canada, the 49-year-old Bellemare had never worked on a big science-fiction film before, nor had he been part of a Hollywood studio production.

In the sci-fi film Arrival, alien spaceships suddenly appear above twelve locations on Earth. The aliens--seven-limbed creatures called heptapods--are willing to let a few humans come aboard for quick chats, but there's no universal translator gizmo to help the two species parley. Instead, each country calls upon its top linguists, including Louise Banks, played by Amy Adams. Banks is whisked away to the nearest spaceship in Montana, tasked with untangling the heptapods' languages and figuring out why they have come to Earth. To find out how linguists might react when faced with an extraterrestrial language, the filmmakers consulted Jessica Coon, a professor of linguistics at McGill University in Montreal.

It could be the start of a Steven Spielberg sci-fi film: A boy walks into a shimmering, aluminum garden pavilion surrounded by lush palms and succulent-lined footpaths. There's a massive crater in the ceiling, open to the blue sky, and the boy cranes his neck backward to gaze at the heavens as puffy white clouds sail past. NASA's 19 earth science satellites, which are quietly circling the planet, seem to be communicating with visitors of the pavilion, their combined "voices" creating a cacophonous concert that now echoes inside the domed chamber. This is the West Coast debut of NASA Orbit Pavilion, on view at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino through Feb. 27. The structure, in the shape of a giant seashell, houses a sound installation that tracks the movement of the International Space Station and NASA's satellites as they make 90-minute trips around the Earth.

Leon Russell called his best-known composition "A Song for You," but a better title might've been "A Song for You -- and You and You and You and You." The heartfelt ballad, instantly recognizable from its opening cascade of delicate piano notes, first appeared on Russell's self-titled debut album in 1970. That's a decade after this singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist -- who died Sunday at age 74 -- moved to Los Angeles from his native Oklahoma and quickly established himself as a go-to session player. Since then, though, "A Song for You" has been recorded and performed hundreds of times by artists as diverse as Donny Hathaway, the Carpenters, Willie Nelson, Amy Winehouse and the rapper Bizzy Bone. In 1994, Ray Charles won a Grammy for his moving rendition of the tune.

The new science-fiction film, it says, has created word-of-mouth, wowed audiences and earned a 100% Fresh rating on the movie review website Rotten Tomatoes. Denis Villeneuve's latest work, starring Amy Adams as a linguist chosen to communicate with alien visitors, may well be that. But it isn't easy to market a masterpiece -- especially a sci-fi masterpiece with spaceships that don't engage in dogfights, aliens who don't fire lasers and protagonists who don't throw punches. When "Arrival" touches down at 2,200 theaters this weekend, it will do so not only as one of the most well-regarded science-fiction movies in some time but as one of the greatest marketing puzzles in recent memory. The Paramount release is quiet, subtle and patient -- an artisanal offering in a time of studio fast food.

Movies that begin with confounding aliens on the loose have been around for awhile (at least since 1951's "Man From Planet X" and "The Day the Earth Stood Still") and they invariably share a family resemblance even if the space visitors themselves never look the same way twice. Where do these beings come from, baffled scientists and frightened government officials inevitably want to know. Are they friendly or hostile, what do they want from us and what are they doing here in the first place? One of the most satisfying things about Denis Villeneuve's elegant, involving "Arrival" is that it is simultaneously old and new, revisiting many of these alien-invasion conventions but with unexpected intelligence, visual style and heart. Working from a smart and effective script by Eric Heisserer adapted from a cerebral short story by science-fiction luminary Ted Chiang, the French-Canadian director and his team have found ways to make these way-out-of-the-ordinary events seem plausible and convincing.

Propped over her breakfast at a West Hollywood cafe one morning in late October, Amy Adams was contemplating her dream role. The actress had just dropped her 6-year-old daughter off at school after returning from traveling to promote her two new films, the science-fiction drama "Arrival" and psychological thriller "Nocturnal Animals." Her mother and husband at a nearby table, Adams was preparing for extended family to arrive in town momentarily. "I need to play somebody who just goes around and gets spa treatments," Adams said, wistfully. "I would have to do a lot of spa treatments, just for research. Adams has certainly earned some downtime after turning in her two new complex lead performances. In Denis Villeneuve's "Arrival," which opens Nov. 11, she plays a linguist haunted by an unexplained melancholy who must learn to communicate with aliens in order to prevent a global war. In Tom Ford's "Nocturnal Animals," which opens a week later, she plays an aloof art gallerist obsessed with her ex-husband's novel. At 42, the five-time Oscar nominee's career has been characterized by a mix of supporting roles, from a naive nun in "Doubt" to the wife of a cult leader in "The Master" to journalist/love interest Lois Lane in the latest round of Superman movies. As "Arrival's" Louise Banks, she reluctantly leads a team of investigators including a scientist played by Jeremy Renner. Much of the film's 10-week shoot took place on a bare soundstage in Montreal, with puppeteers behind a lighted screen serving as the aliens. For the entire production, Adams said, she had a stomachache, a side effect of internalizing Louise's anxiety. "She's not heroic in the traditional sense," Adams said of the character. "I love that she gets to rely on her intellect and instinct as opposed to brawn and bravery." Adams said she prepared for the role by studying linguistics and working with her acting coach on the film's psychological underpinnings, but she is ill-equipped to answer the deep questions the movie raises about science and the nature of time. "It's funny when people start challenging me about it," Adams said, of the movie's internal logic. "If I were able to explain how the science of this film works, I would not be an actress." In "Nocturnal Animals," Adams plays a woman who is equally unmoored, although the milieu -- the Los Angeles fine-art scene -- is far more familiar. Adams' husband is artist Darren Le Gallo, and though his work resides more in the underground art scene than the rarified one depicted in the film, she found some uncomfortable parts of the character to latch onto. "I have definitely been invited into that world at times, the wealth and privilege of a very specific part of the Los Angeles art scene," Adams said. "I found myself really judgmental of this character.