• Rachel Mcadams •
Biography |
Rachel McAdams (born October 7, 1978) is a Canadian actress. She is best known for her roles in the Hollywood films Mean Girls, The Notebook and Wedding Crashers, which all proved to be successful at movie theaters.
Rachel McAdams was born in London, Ontario and grew up in nearby St. Thomas. Her father, Lance, is a truck driver, and her mother, Sandra, is a nurse. She has a younger brother, Daniel, and a younger half-sister, Kayleen.
At the age of four, she took up competitive figure skating. She took up acting at age thirteen at a summer theater camp in London, Ontario named Original Kids. When the company extended to a year-round company, she was invited to continue with them. She attended the publicly-funded secondary school Central Elgin Collegiate Institute in St. Thomas from grade nine to OAC and starred in the Award-winning student production I Live in a Little Town. Later she graduated from York University in Toronto with Honours and a BFA degree in Theatre. During her senior year at York, she played a child in The Piper – a workshop led by a creative team from Toronto's Necessary Angel Theatre Company. She also attended Original Kids Theatre Company in London, Ontario, as well as David Rothenberg's on-camera acting class in Toronto with fellow actors Scott Speedman, Kenneth Mitchell, Polly Shannon and David Sutcliffe.
Rachel McAdams had a large role in the film The Hot Chick, alongside Rob Schneider, but her career really took off when she starred as Regina George, the "queen-bee" in 2004's Mean Girls. McAdams was told to partly model the character of Regina George after Alec Baldwin's performance in Glengarry Glen Ross (1992).
McAdams had previously appeared in the Canadian television series Slings and Arrows, alongside Paul Gross. She played a main role in the first season, but due to her rising stardom was written out of the second season, appearing in only the first episode.
She followed Mean Girls with the film adaptation of Nicholas Sparks' novel The Notebook, alongside Ryan Gosling, with whom she would later begin an off-screen romance.
In 2005, she played Owen Wilson's love interest in Wedding Crashers and then starred in the suspense thriller Red Eye as Lisa Reisert. She played a young woman held captive aboard a red-eye flight by criminal-for-hire and assassin Jackson Rippner (Cillian Murphy). Her most recent role was in the comedy The Family Stone where she starred in an ensemble cast alongside Diane Keaton, Craig T. Nelson, Sarah Jessica Parker, Dermot Mulroney, Luke Wilson, Brian J. White and Claire Danes.
Rachel's career slowed down in 2006. She was originally signed on as the female lead in The Last Kiss but had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts, and the role was given to Jacinda Barrett. McAdams was anxious to sign on to a script which was "creative" and "different." It was said that Rachel turned down Anne Hathaway's role in The Devil Wears Prada, a role in Mission: Impossible III,, all three were box-office smash hits. McAdams eventually returned to acting to do the independent-drama Married Life (which has a limited release date set for November 9, 2007).
In May 2007, Ryan mentioned in an interview that she had auditioned for the role of Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale eventually given to Eva Green the previous year.
|
|
