Rachel McAdams

Rachel McAdams graduated from York University with a theatre degree in 2001 and had an almost unreasonable 2004: Mean Girls and The Notebook in the same year, one of them the definitive modern teen antagonist, the other the definitive modern weepie. Most careers do not recover from that kind of double branding. Hers did, because she quietly refused to repeat either.

The thing she is best at is playing intelligence as impatience. Regina George works because McAdams plays her completely straight, with no wink to the audience, as a young woman running a small and efficient political operation. In Spotlight she does the least showy thing in a film full of showy parts, which is listen, and the Academy Award nomination followed.

Her filmography since has been a series of sidesteps. She took Irene Adler opposite two Sherlock Holmes films, anchored Doctor Strange as the one person in the Marvel picture with a normal job, and did a season of True Detective. She is also, on the evidence of Game Night and the Eurovision comedy, a much better comic actor than the industry has generally noticed.

She has kept the release rate low and the choices odd: a Wim Wenders drama, a Judy Blume adaptation, a Terrence Malick film. In 2026 she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and her films have grossed more than 3.4 billion dollars worldwide.