Rachel McAdams | Biography, Movies, & Facts | Britannica (original) (raw)
Quick Facts
In full:
Rachel Anne McAdams
Also Known As:
Rachel Anne McAdams
Movies/Tv Shows (Acted In):
"Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga" (2020)
"Game Night" (2018)
"Disobedience" (2017)
"Doctor Strange" (2016)
"Spotlight" (2015)
"True Detective" (2015)
"Southpaw" (2015)
"Aloha" (2015)
"The Little Prince" (2015)
"Every Thing Will Be Fine" (2015)
"A Most Wanted Man" (2014)
"About Time" (2013)
"Passion" (2012)
"To the Wonder" (2012)
"The Vow" (2012)
"Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows" (2011)
"Midnight in Paris" (2011)
"Morning Glory" (2010)
"Sherlock Holmes" (2009)
"The Time Traveler's Wife" (2009)
"State of Play" (2009)
"The Lucky Ones" (2008)
"Married Life" (2007)
"The Family Stone" (2005)
"Red Eye" (2005)
"Wedding Crashers" (2005)
"Slings and Arrows" (2003–2005)
"The Notebook" (2004)
"Mean Girls" (2004)
"The Hot Chick" (2002)
"Perfect Pie" (2002)
"My Name Is Tanino" (2002)
"Earth: Final Conflict" (2002)
"The Famous Jett Jackson" (2001)
Rachel McAdams (born November 17, 1978, London, Ontario, Canada) is a Canadian actress known for her versatility.
McAdams grew up in Ontario, where she acted in the Original Kids Theatre Company and in high school plays. Although she was planning to pursue a cultural studies degree, McAdams was persuaded to study theatre instead. She entered the drama program at York University, Toronto, and earned a B.F.A. (2001) while acting professionally with the Necessary Angel Theatre Company. In 2001 she debuted on-screen in a minor role on the Disney Channel’s television show The Famous Jett Jackson. The following year she made her first feature film, My Name Is Tanino, a comedy about a summer romance.
After moving to Los Angeles, McAdams was quickly cast as a lead in The Hot Chick (2002), in which she played a shallow high school girl who switches bodies with a male career criminal (played by Rob Schneider). She next made headlines as the malicious popular girl Regina George in Mean Girls (2004), a comedy written by Tina Fey that was a commercial and critical success. Demonstrating her versatility, in 2004 McAdams starred as Allie, a vivacious upper-class woman who must choose between her wealthy fiancé (James Marsden) and her first love (Ryan Gosling), in the adaptation of Nicholas Sparks’s best-selling novel The Notebook.
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McAdams played another love interest in the comedy Wedding Crashers (2005), but she continued to embrace movies in all genres, starring in the thriller Red Eye (2005) and the crime drama State of Play (2009). In 2009 she appeared opposite Eric Bana in The Time Traveler’s Wife, a love story based on Audrey Niffenegger’s novel of the same name. She also featured in Sherlock Holmes (2009) and its sequel (2011) as Irene Adler, a loosely interpreted version of one of the few love interests to cross Holmes’s path in the detective series by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle upon which the films were based.
In the early 2010s McAdams had roles in several additional films with romantic themes. After portraying a plucky television producer in the comedy Morning Glory (2010), she appeared in Woody Allen’s lighthearted Midnight in Paris (2011). She subsequently starred in the tearjerker The Vow (2012), as a newlywed who develops amnesia; in Terrence Malick’s atmospheric drama To the Wonder (2012); and in About Time (2013), an introspective romantic dramedy that delved into the effects of time travel. In 2014 McAdams played a human rights lawyer in the espionage thriller A Most Wanted Man. The next year she joined the cast of the second season of True Detective, an HBO crime anthology series in which she played a hard-living police officer.
McAdams was cast as the wife of a boxer (Jake Gyllenhaal) in the drama Southpaw and as an investigative journalist in Spotlight (both 2015), about the The Boston Globe exposé on the child molestation cover-up by the city’s Roman Catholic archdiocese. For her work in the latter film, McAdams received her first Academy Award nomination. She next appeared in Doctor Strange (2016), a sci-fi adventure about the Marvel Comics superhero. In 2017 McAdams starred in Disobedience, playing a woman whose marriage to an Orthodox rabbi is tested after the return of her former lover (played by Rachel Weisz). She later appeared in the comedies Game Night (2018) and Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (2020).