Amy Adams recounts chilling incident in which she helped save a man's life after he was stabbed in the neck

Amy Adams looked back on a harrowing life-or-death situation she found herself in the middle of in a new interview.

During an appearance on the June 22 episode of the Smartless podcast, Adams recounted how she stepped into action years earlier and potentially helped save the life of a man who had been brutally stabbed in the neck.

The 51-year-old actress – who made a rare appearance with her lookalike daughter at the premiere of her new series Cape Fear earlier this month – had ventured out to Santa Monica, California, for a day at the beach when she came across the blood-splattered scene.

'We were in Santa Monica, coming out of our favorite restaurant...' Adams recalled, adding that her father had joined her and her husband, Darren Le Gallo, on that day. 'These people were screaming, and a guy was walking, and they were yelling, "He's dying!" And my husband's like, "That's blood!"'

Adams recounted to hosts Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett how she and her father both jumped into action and rushed to help the man with potentially life-threatening injuries.

'He'd been stabbed in the neck,' she said. 'So he was bleeding, and his friends were freaking out.'

Adams said she rustled up towels nearby for her father, who used them to apply pressure to the stab wound in hopes of slowing the injured man's blood loss.

She added that she came on the scene after he had already been attacked, though the six-time Oscar nominee shared her theory about what had happened that day.

'As far as I could make out, they had run into an old college friend and had some drinks and went to the liquor store,' Adams explained. 'They were going to go back to someone's house, and he just freaked out. But I don't know what the whole story is.'

In hindsight, the actress was amazed at how she managed to keep her cool as she tried to help the victim. 

'I'm sitting there somehow going, "You need to calm your pulse rate. Take a deep breath in,"' Adams recalled. '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."'

It was almost a year later when she got a welcome – and emotional – update on the man's fate.

'A guy walks up to me in a restaurant,' Adams recalled. 'He's like, "I heard a story that you and your dad were on the scene of a guy getting stabbed." And I was like, "Yeah, that's so funny you heard that story."'

But after getting a closer look at the man, she realized he was the same person whose path had crossed with hers on that fateful day.

'I was like, "Oh my God, it's you,"' Adams recalled. 'He was all teary, and he had his son with him. It was so crazy.' 

She made the confession following the premiere of her new Apple TV+ miniseries Cape Fear.

She stars on the show with Patrick Wilson as married attorneys whose family is terrorized by a recently released convict (Javier Bardem) who blames them for the conviction that sent him to prison for 17 years.

The miniseries is the latest adaptation of the story, following the 1962 film starring Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum, and the hit 1991 remake starring Robert De Niro and Nick Nolte, with Martin Scorsese directing.

Monday's episode of Smartless also featured a tense interaction in which Will Arnett snapped at his co-host and friend Jason Bateman for pestering him with questions about whether he would 'ever poo in front of' his ex-wife, Amy Poehler.