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Cover Story
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| Sherlock Holmes | Richard Crouse
Movie Entertainment
April 2010
A chameleon who moves effortlessly between film genres and roles, Rachel McAdams has evolved into a national treasure renowned for her intelligence, beauty and wit
The common thread that links her movies, from the über-romance of The Notebook to the bawdy comedy of Wedding Crashers and the intrigue of State of Play, is a simple, yet indefinable quality: intelligence. Her intellect informs every role she takes, even in a completely silly comedy like The Hot Chick, her first hit. It takes smarts to suggestively deliver a line like, “I hear it’s good for the skin if you take your towel off” to a sauna full of women (she was playing a boy trapped in a woman’s body), and still have a career once critics get through with the film.
“That brain is substantial,” Diane Keaton says of her frequent co-star, “and if you have that along with a face you can’t take your eyes off, it’s so compelling. It’s rare.”
McAdams is a rarity, one of the few gilded members of young Hollywood to have made work the focus of their career and avoid becoming a tabloid punching bag like her Mean Girls co-star Lindsay Lohan.
“I want to pick good projects,” she said in a recent interview. “I want to work with great directors and try not to put too much pressure on myself, and just read things for the story and recognize when I’m drawn to something for the right reasons.”
After years of figure skating at ice carnivals, working at McDonald’s in southwestern Ontario, studying drama at York University and appearing in forgettable TV shows (Shotgun Love Dolls, anyone?), the movie that put her on the map was Mean Girls, a smart and funny exposé of high school caste systems.
She modelled the flamboyantly wicked Regina George on Alec Baldwin’s performance in Glengarry Glen Ross. By spitting out lines like, “So you think you’re pretty?” through a cobra smile, she won critical praise and very nearly stole the show.
Then, just when audiences thought they had her typecast, along came 2004’s The Notebook, the deeply romantic Nicholas Sparks story. Given the script just one day in advance of the auditions, McAdams beat out nine other actresses (including Ashley Judd, Britney Spears and Reese Witherspoon) for the now-iconic role of Allie, the woman who finds freedom in the arms of a man (Ryan Gosling) her mother calls “trash.” Roger Ebert said her performance contained “beauty and clarity,” and suddenly Hollywood had a new “it” girl.
Although she admits to being a “sucker for sweeping love stories,” she didn’t capitalize on the breakout success of The Notebook by churning out a series of cookie-cutter romances or taking advantage of the huge offers coming her way – she turned down the role of Bond girl Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale – opting instead for a variety of romances in the traditional sense.
She made waves as Owen Wilson’s love interest in the raunchy comedy Wedding Crashers, became an action star in Wes Craven’s thriller Red Eye, and played the outspoken daughter of Diane Keaton and Craig T. Nelson in the critically lauded ensemble family drama The Family Stone.
Then, as quickly as she came to prominence, she was gone. For almost two years she was absent from screens until she took on the role of Kay, the platinum blond focus of a love triangle involving Chris Cooper and Pierce Brosnan, in the suspenseful psychological thriller Married Life. It’s the film she credits with rejuvenating her interest in filmmaking after some time off.
Since then she’s been a mainstay at festivals and multiplexes, playing everything from a soldier whose boyfriend was killed saving her life in The Lucky Ones, to the titular spouse in the sci-fi romance The Time Traveler’s Wife, and Sherlock Holmes’s beguiling Irene Adler opposite Robert Downey Jr.
Her best reviews of 2009 came with State of Play (which airs on TMN and Movie Central this month), a political drama in the spirit of All the President’s Men. She co-stars with Russell Crowe and Helen Mirren as a Washington Post blogger working with Crowe’s investigative reporter to unravel clues in the murder of a congressman’s mistress.
With a full slate of films announced for the next couple of years – including Morning Glory with Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton, and a project with legend Terrence Malick – it seems the chameleon spirit of Rachel McAdams is just as restless as ever.
“It’s fun to experiment,” she says. “I’m always kind of a slave to the character. Whatever kind of vision comes to my head, I just have to go with it.”
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