Rachel McAdams rose to fame in Mean Girls and The Notebook. But this actress never planned
on making it big in Hollywood. This is the untold truth of Rachel McAdams.
Before she had any aspirations to act, Rachel McAdams was interested in ice skating, so
much so that her coach encouraged her to go pro. She told Glamour,
"I definitely was in the sequined, bedazzled era. We would put blue eyeshadow up our eyebrows,
and glitter all over our faces. I probably put more effort into my skating outfits than
my clothes."
McAdams picked up a pair of skates when she was only 4 years old and competed against
other Canadians until she turned 18. However, even though she won competition after competition,
she didn't feel as confident on skates as she did on her school's stage. In 2012, McAdams
told The Scotsman,
"I think I wanted some kind of outlet to express myself but I didn’t know what that was.
I found I was quite nervous in sports in a way that held me back, whereas I discovered
that in acting the nerves propelled me forward. They got me on to the stage unlike figure
skating where my knees would knock together and I thought I was going to be sick."
Obviously, the sequins simply weren't cutting it.
Rachel McAdams has a makeup stylist that knows much more about her than anybody else she's
worked with in showbiz, because it just so happens to be her sister, Kayleen McAdams.
The actress told The Hollywood Reporter,
"Kayleen has a very calming effect on me [...] Spending two hours with her beforehand sets me for
the night."
Alongside Rachel, Kayleen has worked with countless other A-listers, like Mandy Moore
and Duchess Meghan Markle. But interestingly enough, these siblings worked together long
before either one made it in Hollywood. As teenagers growing up in Canada, Rachel and
Kayleen spent three years serving burgers and fries at McDonald's. It was a family affair,
because their younger brother, personal trainer Daniel McAdams, was involved in the fast food
business, too. In fact, Kayleen happened to be their manager. Rachel told Glamour,
"It was a great place to work [...] I was not a great employee; I broke the orange juice
machine one day."
"Yeah, but it was great, it was a lot of fun."
While she's no stranger to the big screen, one place you've surely not spotted Rachel
McAdams is on social media, as the actress isn't on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.
She told People back in 2009,
"I listen to the news on the radio. I don't have a television and I am really bad at e-mail
[...] It was only recently that I heard about Twitter for the first time, and it's all I've
heard about since. I'm really ignorant."
Though she loves to act, the celebrity aspect of her career is one thing McAdams can live
without. In fact, nobody even knew for sure that McAdams had been pregnant with her first
child until she was spotted walking with her longtime boyfriend, screenwriter Jamie Linden,
and their newborn son in 2018. Basically, if you want to know what's new with this Hollywood
star, you're definitely going to have to do some digging. As McAdams' Southpaw co-star,
Jake Gyllenhaal, told the Los Angeles Times,
"She very clearly has her life and her work life."
While some actors might not be very interested in being a student, Rachel McAdams is always
up for learning a new skill. This is especially true if it will help her performances on the
big screen. McAdams admitted to Glamour,
"I use filming as an excuse to take classes. I got my certification in sailing for Wedding
Crashers, and now I can handle a 26-foot boat. [...] I love dipping into these other lives."
"I kind of educated myself."
McAdams clearly takes her work very seriously. As McAdams told Marie Claire,
"I love the exploration of someone who has such a different background from you. That
exploration runs to compassion, and to cracking yourself open and creating more understanding
of how weird and amazing life is."
Fancy cars are something most celebrities seem to splurge on, but as an actress who
isn't interested in fame, Rachel McAdams rides a bicycle. In fact, the actress told The Star
in 2019,
"Funnily enough, I've never actually owned a car. I've always rented. I sort of drive
my bike like a maniac around Toronto. That's my vehicle of choice."
McAdams also opened up to Parade about her passion for environmental issues and said,
"I try to introduce it into every part of my life if I can, always looking for a greener,
lighter way to do everything."
Many actors avoid watching their own films for various reasons. Rachel McAdams, however,
has had no choice but to see herself act on multiple occasions as her in-flight entertainment.
McAdams explained on Late Night with Conan O'Brien back in 2005,
"I've seen all my movies on a plane, except for Red Eye, which is strange."
McAdams admitted that filming the thriller made her scared of flying, something she was
never afraid of before. As she told The Scotsman,
"I did start to have a fear of flying after I shot a movie where I was terrorized on a
plane. I made Wes Craven’s Red Eye [...] I don’t think they’re linked but it does
make me pause and wonder if they are, so perhaps I will explore that in therapy some day."
Rachel McAdams is a superstar who is looking to be a superhero. She was reportedly offered
the chance to play Pepper Potts, the love interest of Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark
in Iron Man, but turned it down. McAdams later joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe, starring
alongside Benedict Cumberbatch in Doctor Strange. But that role simply wasn't super enough.
As a fan of graphic novels and cartoons, there's a live-action movie that McAdams would jump
at the chance to be a part of, and that's ThunderCats. She told Blackfilm.com back in
2005,
"I would love to play Cheetara [...] I haven't [heard anything about the actual movie] [...] but
let me know!"
Rachel McAdams might avoid social media herself, but her moles became a trending topic in June
2020. Cafe Mom wrote of the star of The Notebook,
"McAdams is so proud of her complexion that she went sans makeup on Allure's August 2014
cover, deliberately flaunting her marks."
However, McAdams' moles became a hot topic in Internet searches when she starred opposite
Will Ferrell in Netflix's Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga. Several viewers
felt inspired after watching the flick, and one Metro reporter wrote,
"I realized part way through that Rachel McAdams was moley. Like me. And not just a teeny little
freckle mole. She’s got a proper, significant, raised mole on the side of her face which,
for once, wasn’t covered by airbrushing, her hair or make-up."
Some people want a job so badly that they lie to get it, but Rachel McAdams took this
fib a step further by lying about her severe allergies to land a role. When approached
to join the film, To the Wonder, McAdams couldn't wait to work with its director, Terrence Malick.
However, when he mentioned to her that a big scene between her and co-star Ben Affleck
would involve horses, she did what any good actress would do and pretended to get excited
about it. McAdams explained to The Indy Channel,
"I said, 'I love horses' [...] [But] I'm so terrified and allergic."
"Don't pretend like you don't remember."
While filming the scene in question, the crew quickly caught on that horses weren't her
favorite thing when McAdams' eyes immediately swelled shut. Thankfully, she wasn't riding
one at the time.
A job in the entertainment industry is sure to take over most aspects of an actor's life,
but if Rachel McAdams wasn't an actress, she would be working as a farmer. Even though
she's continuing to make Hollywood hits, McAdams is also still making the time to live out
her dream of farming at her home outside of Toronto. At least, in the easiest way she
can for now. She explained during the "Heroes of Health" virtual event in April 2020,
"I have a very welcome distraction in my son, who is 2 [...] We live in the country, so
there's a little farm down the road [...] We can go and look at the animals. [...] We've
been doing some planting, some okra. Well, I do the planting and he eats snacks, mostly."
Basically, McAdams is extremely content living a quiet life in the countryside with her young
son.
Rachel McAdams was only 25 years old when her success exploded after shooting both the
teen comedy Mean Girls and love story The Notebook in the same year. However, after
wrapping up her time on two big hits in 2004, she nearly called it quits from acting altogether.
The fame was getting to her, and it even started to affect McAdams' then-romance with co-star
Ryan Gosling.
To get away from it all, McAdams eventually headed back home to Canada in 2006, where
she lived a normal life for a while. She explained to Marie Claire,
"I had to kind of reassess and go, What did I want this [success] to be, and how did I
expect it to look?"
"I have to go."
During that time, McAdams turned down major roles in The Devil Wears Prada, Mission: Impossible
III, Casino Royale, and Get Smart. When she finally decided to step back into the spotlight
in 2008, she was very selective of the parts she chose to take on. McAdams later admitted
to The Times,
"Everything was happening really quickly, there were a lot of cooks in the kitchen,
a lot of voices around me, and I wanted to step away so I could hear my own voice again.
[...] There was no instruction book available about how to deal with it, and also, truthfully,
I never really wanted to be a big movie star."
Needless to say, viewers are most definitely glad that the actress made a return to Hollywood.
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