Rachel Anne McAdams (born November 17, 1978 in London, Ontario) is a Canadian actor.
Adams first came to prominence playing the title role in the 2002 comedy The Hot Chick alongside Rob Schneider, but her career really progressed when she starred as "queen bee" Regina George in 2004's Mean Girls. She was much older than the character she played. She followed Mean Girls with the film adaptation of Nicholas Sparks' novel The Notebook, with Ryan Gosling, with whom she later began an off-screen romance.
In 2005, she played Owen Wilson's love interest in Wedding Crashers, then starred in the suspense thriller Red Eye as Lisa Reisert, a young woman held captive aboard a red-eye flight by criminal-for-hire and assassin Jackson Rippner (Cillian Murphy).
In 2009, McAdams starred in Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, where she played the role of Irene Adler alongside Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes and Jude Law as Watson; she reprised the role in the 2011 sequel, A Game of Shadows. Also in 2011, she starred as Becky Fuller in the cult comedy Morning Glory, alongside Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton.
Also in 2009, she played Clare in The Time Traveler's Wife (2009), based on the book, starring with Eric Bana.
She has an old school Hollywood beauty about her. In fact, part of what helped her land her role in Sherlock Holmes was her classic looks, which didn't make her look too young to be a love interest for Robert Downey Jr. (13 years her senior). Among the people she has dated in Real Life are Ryan Gosling (2005–07) and Michael Sheen (2010–13); since 2014, she has been in a relationship with screenwriter Jamie Linden, with whom she has a son (born in 2018) and a daughter.
Some people jokingly refer to her as the "Time Traveler’s Love Interest" after she starred in four films playing the love interest to a male lead who could time travel or control time in some way — The Time Traveler's Wife (2009), Midnight in Paris, About Time, and Doctor Strange. McAdams herself has reportedly gotten sick of this and wants to be in a movie where she can be the time traveler for a change.
Selected Filmography:
- Guilt by Association (2002) as Danielle
- The Hot Chick (2002) as Jessica Spencer / Clive Maxtone
- Mean Girls (2004) as Regina George
- The Notebook (2004) as Allison "Allie" Hamilton
- Wedding Crashers (2005) as Claire Cleary
- Red Eye (2005) as Lisa Reisert
- The Family Stone (2005) as Amy Stone
- State of Play (2009) as Della Frye
- The Time Traveler's Wife (2009) as Clare Abshire
- Sherlock Holmes (2009) as Irene Adler
- Morning Glory (2010) as Becky Fuller
- Midnight in Paris (2011) as Inez
- The Vow (2012) as Paige Collins
- Passion (2012) as Christine Stanford
- To the Wonder (2012) as Jane
- About Time (2013) as Mary
- A Most Wanted Man (2014) as Annabel Richter
- Aloha (2015) as Tracy Woodside
- Southpaw (2015) as Maureen Hope
- Spotlight (2015) as Sacha Pfeiffer note
- Marvel Cinematic Universe (2016–present) as Dr. Christine Palmer
- Doctor Strange (2016)
- Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)
- Game Night (2018) as Annie Davis
- Disobedience (2018) as Esti Kuperman
- Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (2020) as Sigrit Ericksdottir
- Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. (2023) as Barbara Simon
- The Famous Jett Jackson (1 episode, 2001) as Hannah Grant
- Earth: Final Conflict (1 episode, 2002) as Christine Bickwell
- Slings & Arrows (7 episodes, 2003–05) as Kate McNab
- True Detective (8 episodes, 2015) as Det. Antigone "Ani" Bezzerides
- What If...? (1 episode, 2021) as Dr. Christine Palmer (voice)
Tropes relating to her roles:
- Actor Allusion:
- In Red Eye the photo of Lisa playing hockey is a screenshot of Rachel from Mean Girls.
- She has played an artist and painter in three films - The Notebook, The Vow and The Time Traveler's Wife (2009).
- Rachel has also played the love interest of time travelers in The Time Traveler's Wife, Midnight In Paris, About Time, and Doctor Strange.
- Dawson Casting: Most egregious in Mean Girls - where she was 24. In fact she was eight years older than her co-star Lindsay Lohan.
- Dye Hard: Naturally brunette, but known to dye her hair blonde and red over the years. She wore a Blonde wig in Mean Girls.
- Fake American: She's Canadian but most of her roles are Americans.
- Older Than They Look: She's nearly 45 but looks to be in her late twenties-early thirties.
- Reality Subtext: She had a fear of flying in her youth, lending a lot to her role in Red Eye.
- Reclusive Artist: She doesn't use social media or give many interviews, and has stated in the past that she likes to keep her privacy.
- Romance on the Set: With Ryan Gosling on the set of The Notebook. Which is quite amusing, because they reportedly didn't get on at first.
- Star-Making Role: The double whammies of The Notebook and Mean Girls instantly made people know who she was.
- What Could Have Been:
- She was the first choice for Andy in The Devil Wears Prada, but turned it down. Anne Hathaway ended up playing her.
- She had to turn down the female lead in The Last Kiss, which then went to Jacinda Barrett.
- She was also the preferred choice for Pepper Potts in Iron Man, which ended up going to Gwyneth Paltrow. Rachel would later join the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Doctor Strange (2016).
