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Rachel McAdams:Does it All For Loveby Lynn B
We chatted with mega-friendly Rachel in Beverly Hills recently and she looks the total opposite of her “Notebook” 1930’s and ‘40’s character Allie Hamilton in modern, gorgeous, multi-colored off-the-shoulder print dress and silver dangle earrings. She told us the dark hair wasn’t done for a role but just for her own satisfaction. We dished about her sudden fame, a teacher who turned her life around, romance and the crazy things we do for love. AGW: Can you really believe this is all happening for you? Rachel: I can’t. A lot has happened. I’ve had many moving moments, Just yesterday on the plane I asked for a newspaper and saw the big “Notebook” advertisement and then was flipping through and saw this really interesting article about why Canadians play such good villains, that sort of cross over and why we’ve become such strong villains. They mentioned me in Mean Girls and Colm Feore in The Chronicles of Riddick and Bruce Greenwood. And then I was reading that and I looked up and The Notebook trailer came on the screen in the plane. It’s almost overwhelming! AGW: Are you still living around Toronto? Rachel: Yeah, I sort of don’t live anywhere. I live in my suitcase, but I went back to Toronto, I was there for about three days coming back from Maryland on a film I just finished. AGW: Ryan Gosling’s character is really crazy in love in with you in The Notebook. Why can’t guys get away with this kind of obsessive behavior in real life? Rachel: Because it’s called stalking (we laugh). I don’t know but I think there’s something about period (films) that make those big, romantic gestures so much more. The idea of a man reconstructing a house for a woman, nowadays you would never hear about that, but back then if carpentry was your trade and you were in love with a woman, you combine the two and you come up with this beautiful, romantic gesture – maybe it is stalking, I don’t know. Maybe it is a bit obsessive. AGW: Oddly, you and Ryan share the same birthplace, did your paths ever cross in Canada? Rachel: Never, beyond St. Joseph’s Hospital. I’m a little older than him. I grew up in St. Thomas and I think he grew up in Ontario for a little while and then moved to the States. AGW: Noah (Ryan’s character) climbs up a Ferris wheel to get your attention, what’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done to get a guy’s attention? Rachel: 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, and then ran into him and, ‘Oh my God, you work here? I had no idea.’ It’s the most manipulative thing I’ve done in my entire life, but it all worked out very well, so I have no regrets. AGW: Is he still your sweetheart? Rachel: He’s not anymore. But for a long time he was. AGW: So nobody special in your life now? Rachel: No. No time. It sounds so terrible. No time, no home, no place to put a boy. AGW: In the past, was there anything a man has done for you that you thought was really sweet? Rachel: The most romantic thing, a lovely boy bought me a dress once. He got my measurements, actually they were from The Notebook and I had them sitting somewhere, and he found them and bought me this dress, tailor-made, this beautiful little black cocktail dress. And I thought that was very, very classy. AGW: How did you get interested in acting in the first place? Rachel: Shakespeare. I mean I 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. I was very intense about it for a long time, and tried art and that really didn’t work for me, and I can’t sing, so eventually I hooked onto some Shakespeare when I was about twelve. AGW: What happened after that? Rachel: Well, it was a summer acting camp, and then they wound up doing a year round company, and I was invited back. I played a juvenile delinquent, then I went back in the summer and did Greek tragedy. I was going to give it up when I went to university, I thought, ‘I’m going to quit skating and I’m going to go get a degree and make something of myself.’ I wound up studying theatre but on the day the applications were due, I ran into my old drama teacher, and she said, ‘So what are you going to school for and where are you going?’ And I said, ‘I’m taking cultural studies.’ And she was like, ‘I’m really surprised, I thought you’d go into theatre.’ And I said, ‘Well, you can’t really go to school for theatre, it’s a bit of a joke,’ and she was so offended that I said that. AGW: Did she just walk away or nudge you to consider it? Rachel: She said you’re totally wrong and I think you should do it. I guess I was just needed someone to say it because I just walked into the guidance office said, ‘Hand me my application,’ she was very reluctant, she didn’t know why I had this crazed look in my eye I guess, and the next thing I knew I was auditioning for schools. And then it just started to make a lot of sense.
Rachel: At first I was actually auditioning for Lindsay Lohan’s role, and I had concerns, because I had done The Hot Chick, about playing that cheerleader, head cheerleader, popular girl that’s just mean to everyone because she feels like it. But I realized that there was far more room to be a sociopath with Regina, and to be a bit of a nightmare. And there was the getting hit by the bus and gaining all this weight, there were so many great little gimmicks involved that I just couldn’t pass up. AGW: She has some great nasty comebacks. Rachel: I know, right. She seems sort of very confident. Everyone thinks she’s really insecure and yes I think that that’s true but I thought it was really interesting to explore this girl that just really wants to be nasty, and find some kind of overwhelming glee in that, because I’ve met those people and they’re a different kind of animal. AGW: Did you audition for “Notebook” with Ryan Gosling? Rachel: We auditioned together, yes, and that was impressive to me when Lynn Harris, the producer, told me that Ryan and Nick (Cassavetes, the director) had been on a tour of the country looking for Allie Hamilton. I went in and they were both very open and no pressure, we’ll just take it slow. They were really tough scenes and we just went from there. It was great to have him there. AGW: What was the initial attraction to the script for you? Rachel: Weeping and sobbing uncontrollably. AGW: Were you familiar with the book? Rachel: I wasn’t familiar with the book. I read the script and went into the audition the next day and I think I was so full of that emotion, of the love story, and I believed in it so much when I went in there that it just sort of translated. AGW: How do keep something like this fresh or new for modern audiences? Rachel: It’s very simplistic. I think love is the through line and it’s universal and it doesn’t matter what period of time, or place, or people. That’s something we all connect to. That’s the thin thread that I think keeps it all together. AGW: It looks very romantic kissing in the rain and stuff but how uncomfortable was shooting that? Rachel: I’ll be honest, I love that it looks great and it’s very romantic but we went through a lot to get that, and it was totally worth it. When I see myself jump in the water, I just get chills but at the same time I’m so glad we did it. We did lots of takes on it, pelting rain. It was coming out of a fire-hose. We were being sandblasted, and Nick said to me, “Try to keep your eyes open when you say, ‘You wrote me?’” And it’s pelting, it’s actually hurting my eyes. All those elements add to a performance in a weird way. You just get sort of immune to the situations. AGW: The Notebook takes place in the South. Did Southern U.S. culture take a lot of getting used to for you? Rachel: Yeah. The heat for one thing, when I got off the plane, it’s humid in Toronto, but nothing like there. I loved it. Charleston is very spiritual and there are a lot of ghosts there and a lot of history, so getting into the period aspect of it, it was a great place to be, to sort of go back in time. The Spanish moss and everything lended to helping me find the character and then that southern hospitality. It’s so interesting, southern women are such a strong force to reckon with. AGW: Having gotten more and more famous this year, are you making any sort of plans to insure you maintain a certain normalcy in your life? Rachel: Yeah. I go camping with the bears and the bugs up in northern Canada. It’s funny, because yesterday I was in Toronto for like three days, because I had just wrapped the other film,(The Wedding Crashers) and my friends and I went out for brunch and then went to this huge garage sale. I was having these memory flashes, I was walking home not that long ago, with a big chair over my head and a $5 coffee table under my arm. Stuff like that helps I find. We bought a chair and a coffee table that only had three legs. AGW: You just finished this movie, The Wedding Crashers with Owen Wilson. You’re the object of his desire I guess – is it another obsessive guy? Rachel: (laughs) I guess so. What is it with these men? AGW: What was it like working with Owen? Rachel: It was great, I learned so much about improvising and just having fun and keeping things loose. It was a nice contrast to The Notebook. AGW: Some actors say Owen Wilson is hotter because of his broken nose. Rachel: I have to say I have a little soft spot for all the little broken angles in his nose, and the way he purses those lips, and his southern drawl, his Texas drawl.
Pictures courtesy of New Line Cinema and Paramount Pictures |
 
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This
Canadian cutie now starring with Ryan Gosling in the old-fashioned love
story The Notebook, started out as a thespian in school plays.
Hollywood almost lost Rachel to the world of competitive figure skating
but the acting bug bit hard and she majored in theater at NYU and starred
in various Canadian productions before landing her break-out role in The
Hot Chick opposite Rob Schneider. Rachel, now dark brunette, stayed
blonde for her recent role as Regina, a nasty “Mean Chick”
opposite Lindsay Lohan. She’ll soon be seen co-starring with Owen
Wilson in The Wedding Crashers about two pals who crash weddings
to meet hot women.
AGW:
When you saw the script for Mean Girls, and saw how that character was
written, was playing mean a fun challenge for you?