Birthday: November 17, 1978
Hometown: London, Ontario, Canada
Status: Dating actor Josh Lucas

London, Ontario native Rachel McAdams once turned down a Bond-girl role (Casino Royale) because she wanted to focus on “other projects.” “I’m not going to make movies just to make movies,” McAdams admitted to Elle. “I have to be passionate about it. And at the same time, I can get very distracted when I’m working, and I like to get back to my life a lot.”
McAdams’ star rose quickly when she appeared in a barrage of blockbuster films that included her first major role in Mean Girls, in which she played a cruel high-school cliqueleader training the unpopular character of Lindsay Lohan to be mean. This afforded McAdams the opportunity to play one of her most memorable roles yet, in the heart-wrenching love story The Notebook, costarring Canadian hunk Ryan Gosling (with whom McAdams had a long-term romance).
But romance aside, McAdams pushed her abilities as an actress to play the action heroine in Red Eye,and tackled comedy once again in the smash hit Wedding Crashers. Next, she proved she could hold her own in a stellar ensemble cast including Diane Keaton, Claire Danes, Sarah Jessica Parker and Luke Wilson in The Family Stone.
“When Wedding Crashers came out, everyone was hyped up, calling Rachel the new It Girl,” Tom Bezucha, director of The Family Stone, told Elle. “I felt anxious about that because it’s so diminishing to her talent. You get the impulse—you want to put her in everything. But her selectiveness shows wisdom greater than her years about her place in the industry. She’s very purposeful in side¬stepping Hollywood. She has the opportunity to be this huge, huge movie star, but in her heart she’s a character actress.”
This year, she also lit up the screen as the luminous Claire Abshire in the epic romance The Time Traveler’s Wife, and will show her grit in Sherlock Holmes as Irene Adler, the only woman to ever get the better of the famed detective, who is played by Robert Downey Jr.—Marissa Stapley-Ponikowski

Upcoming Films:
Morning Glory (2010)
Sherlock Holmes (December 2009)

Selected Filmography:
The Time Traveler’s Wife
State of Play
The Family Stone
Red Eye
Wedding Crashers
The Notebook
Mean Girls
The Hot Chick

Rachel McAdams Gallery: