Rachel McAdams
I'm not an amazing cook. But I can follow a recipe!Collection: Food
I sort of always had an inkling towards some kind of an art form. I grew up in a very small town, and I just figure-skated. My dad played hockey and I was surrounded by sports, but it wasn't quite doing it for me. I wasn't totally fulfilled, and I did a lot of skating.Collection: Sports
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 played a seamstress once, so I took sewing classes. I love dipping into these other lives.Collection: Wedding
I love auditioning. Since 'The Notebook' and 'Wedding Crashers,' I don't have to audition anymore, and I miss it. You get to show your interpretation of the character. I get nervous when I don't audition. What if they hate what I want to do?Collection: Wedding
I try to shut out ideas about why you should do things. Trying to do good architecture and really designing a career? There's some attention to be paid to that, but I don't think it's everything.Collection: Architecture
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.Collection: Amazing
I confess I am a romantic. I love romance, and I think it's really fun and delicious and some of my favorite films are love stories. I think that you just get a chance to fall in love with the characters so much and you get to explore their lives so deeply.Collection: Romantic
My mother never put an emphasis on looks. She let us grow up on our own time line. She never forced any beauty regimen into my world.Collection: Beauty
I'm a hopeless romantic and I believe that you can find love in many different places and be very conflicted. I've discovered as I've grown up that life is far more complicated than you think it is when you're a kid. It isn't just a straightforward fairytale.Collection: Romantic
With a film, you just don't have time to build sympathy for the character. But I think we're moving away from that in TV. With TV, you have a little more leeway to allow them to rise and fall and rise again and be much more complicated beings.Collection: Sympathy
I have a certain curiosity for life that drives me and propels me forward.
I personally think you can have a really rich and full life with no abs. Abs are for wimps.
You have to be really open to your acting partners and believe in the story.
I do have a side of me that would just love to be stuck in the woods and have to stick it out and be really resourceful.
During a movie, chemistry is so important, and yet they just assume actors can fake their way through it. That doesn't always work.
I think there's something really powerful and refreshing about a woman who is unapologetic.
What I love is dropping into someone else's life and exploring it.
Running through airports with pounds of luggage - that's a good workout.
You know when you find a great dress, you've gotta hold on to it.
I prefer to be a villainess. There's something a bit more delicious about their wickedness.
A kiss with anyone, on or off camera, can be intimidating. I've been kissing for nearly two decades now, and I'm always convinced I'm not doing it right. Chemistry is so important in a great kiss. You can act your way through anything, but it's hard with a kiss.
I can be quite surprised by what makes me cry, but it's usually spiritual things.
I feel like I'm going backwards, actually, as I get older. I'm regressing. I feel more and more like a kid, which is kind of a fun feeling.
I find British men very gentlemanly... like opening doors. There is a certain chivalry about British men which I like, and I'm a sucker for an accent.
I definitely believe that you are drawn to certain things for inexplicable reasons, but in a very powerful way. I don't know what it is exactly, but I know that things happen kind of miraculously sometimes, and so I'm willing to believe that there's something pretty magical out there.
I've discovered as I've grown up that life is far more complicated than you think it is when you're a kid. It isn't just a straightforward fairytale.
With any project I work on - not just 'True Detective' - I don't feel the need just to play a strong woman. I don't want the audience to say, 'Oh, she was so strong.' I want to play characters that are flawed and interesting.
I definitely was in the sequined, bedazzled era. We would put blue eye shadow up our eyebrows and glitter all over our faces. I probably put more effort into my skating outfits than my clothes.
I don't know, I like to go on really different types of dates. Going someplace new or some new part of the city, something that's not your average thing. Something where you just go have an adventure together.
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 and try to maintain some sanity.
I'm waiting for them to make 'Thundercats'. I would love to be Cheetara.
I've sort of heard that 'it' girl thing, but not really. Hearing it from a few people doesn't solidify it in my mind and I wouldn't know how to solidify that title. It's so elusive and what does it mean, I don't know?
If I hurt someone, if I were to accidentally poke someone's eye out, I would laugh. And then I'd say, 'I'm sorry, I really do feel bad,' but then I'm on the floor rolling.
You know, I have some issues. But I just love to play different characters all the time, and I try not to repeat myself too much.
The craziest thing I've ever done to get a guy's attention? I admit I stalked someone. I showed up at a restaurant where I knew the guy worked, and we were actually good friends and had lost touch, and I pretended that I didn't know he worked there.
I think love is the through line and it's universal and it doesn't matter what period of time, time or place, or people, that's something we all connect to. That's the thin thread that I think keeps it altogether.
I did do some Shakespeare on film, it's really difficult. It's really interesting, because I was doing a series in Canada called 'Slings and Arrows' and it was about a company based around the Stratford Festival.
I love those preliminary conversations about who a character is. You try on wigs, shoes and clothes. It's preferable when it's not about looking pretty. It can get a little dull to just be cute. We talk about things like, maybe my character can't afford these Christian Louboutins.
I'm very silly as a person, but quality silliness on-screen has more of an art to it. Harrison Ford, whom I was in 'Morning Glory' with, has mastered that dry funny better than anyone.
I really like having a life outside work. I sometimes wish I did more career stuff and was in that Hollywood scene a bit more. But Toronto's my home.
I always wish I could go back and see the people that I love as children.
I think one thing that kids who grow up on farms really have going for them is they have exposure to death and birth in a totally different way. I think it takes away a little bit of the mystery and a little bit of the fear, and I do wish I had that. And I wish I was able to grow my own food.
I didn't get my first pilot that I screen-tested for, and I really thought it was the end of the world. But it's fine, you know, you move on to something else.
Joan Cusack is one of my favorite comedic actresses, and every part she plays is so different. She does the wackiest stuff and somehow it works. I like watching her a lot, and I think you can always go further and pull back. That's something I really have to work on.
New York is so full of the best unemployed actors on the planet.
You know I never used to be a bad flyer, but 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.
I think a lot of people are with the one they're meant to be with. I see it watching my parents because they've been together for so long and are still very much in love. I'm just sort of in awe of that.
I want to pick good projects, 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 and try to maintain some sanity. Sanity would be good. I'd like to have a little sanity!
A friend of mine had this great theory about the Teletubbies, that it's preparing us for being mindless. And getting us ready for living in an underground world. That's why the scenery is so flat.
I had a small-town life - I worked at the local McDonald's for three years. I'm not sure why they kept me: I am something of a daydreamer and a dawdler, so they would only let me be the 'friendly voice' that greeted you when you entered the restaurant.