Rachel McAdams reflects on the roles she turned down: ‘That was the right person for that’
Oscar nominee Rachel McAdams has been one of the most sought-after lead actresses in Hollywood for years, but in a new interview, the “Mean Girls” star said she has no regrets about the roles she’s turned down.
“There’s certainly things like ‘I wish I’d done that,’” McAdams said to Bustle. “I step back and go, ‘That was the right person for that.’”
While the Bustle interview mentions McAdams had passed on films like “Iron Man,” “Casino Royale,” and “The Devil Wears Prada,” among other late 2000s hits, McAdams herself isn’t quoted as citing those projects by name. She was rumored to be on the list of contenders to play Vesper Lynd in “Casino Royale” alongside stars like Angelina Jolie and Charlize Theron (the part eventually went to Eva Green). McAdams was reportedly sent the script for “Iron Man” to play Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow eventually won the role). It’s not publicly known how close she came to either of those projects.
In the case of “The Devil Wears Prada,” there is confirmation that McAdams was approached for the lead role of Andy courtesy of “Prada” director David Frankel. “We offered it to Rachel McAdams three times. The studio was determined to have her, and she was determined not to do it,” Frankel told Entertainment Weekly in 2021. Anne Hathaway was cast as Andy instead.
“I felt guilty for not capitalizing on the opportunity that I was being given, because I knew I was in such a lucky spot,” McAdams told Bustle of that particularly busy period in her career, after “Wedding Crashers” and “The Notebook” and “Mean Girls.” “But I also knew it wasn’t quite jiving with my personality and what I needed to stay sane… There were definitely some anxious moments of wondering if I was just throwing it all away, and why was I doing that? It’s taken years to understand what I intuitively was doing.”
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