Rachel McAdams: Her romantic side

Aug 17 2009 By Shereen Low

Rachel McAdams is becoming one of Hollywood's most sought-after leading ladies. The Canadian actress, who stars in The Time Traveler's Wife, which was released on Friday August 14, reveals what she'd like to do if she could travel back in time.

"Yeah! I confess, I am a romantic," admits the 30-year-old actress, when we meet in a plush suite at a New York hotel.

"I love romance, and I think it's really fun and delicious. And you know, some of my favourite films are love stories."

Canadian-born Rachel's favourite love story is the one about her parents, who have been happily married for many years.

"I find relationships so fascinating. I like just watching my parents - they've been together so long and they're still so very much in love," she says.

"I'm in awe of that. I think it's a really interesting case study, to see how people spend their lives together.

"There are all these intimate moments that you're not privy to in life. You can't be a fly on the wall to people's relationships."

While the actress will discuss her parents' marriage, she's more guarded when it comes to her own relationships, which famously include a three-year romance with Notebook co-star Ryan Gosling (who hails from her hometown) and her current beau, actor Josh Lucas.

"I think there's a lot that happens in life that's very serendipitous," she says cryptically, refusing to be drawn into further detail.

Rachel - looking chic in a colourful one-shouldered Abaete creation, with her hair swept up - is set to light up the big screen again in the romantic fantasy, The Time Traveler's Wife.

Based on the best-selling novel by Audrey Niffenegger, it tells the story of Clare, whose one true love, Henry (played by Eric Bana), suffers from a rare genetic disorder, which makes him travel back and forth through time uncontrollably.

The effect is that the couple meet when they're both at different stages of their lives - while Clare's life runs chronologically, Henry often pops into it from the future, so that he's older than she is.

To say that Rachel loved the book - and coveted the role - is an understatement.

"I had read the book and dreamed of playing Clare for a while, and it was such a long time before it actually happened," she reveals.

"I just fell madly in love with it and knew in the back of my mind that they were doing a movie at some point in time and I just waited. Hoping. Clare was with me for a really long time, in a really weird way. Not heavily, but just something I thought about a lot. I don't why, I just did."

She adds: "I think it's a little bit subconscious sometimes the things that draw you to a role or to a character. It wasn't anything in particular about her that I wanted to explore.

"I loved the story and I loved [director] Robert Schwentke's take on the story and I wanted to adapt that and translate that as well as I possibly could."

The time travelling element provided a different take on the conventional love story.

"It takes a love story and makes it a fantasy story in a sense. If you removed that, the film wouldn't work in quite the same way," she says.

Rachel found herself drawn into Clare and Henry's relationship - and how they overcome the odds to make it work.

"I think there's a definite choice being made between these two characters. I think they choose to be together every day. I think they could walk away but it's chemistry and it's alchemy and whatever your challenges are, you make it work somehow."

She smiles: "You could be with a man who doesn't have chromosomal displacement disorder and have some kind of other problem."

While Clare makes the choice to be with Henry whenever and however she can, the actress has doubts about how long she would wait for her true love.

"Years is stretching it," she says, with a giggle.

"Months, I could do months. I've had to do months. That happens all the time. Years, it gets to be a little more of a challenge."

For parts of the film, Clare appears as an older and a younger version of herself and Rachel relished the chance to relive her teenage years.

"It was fun to be 16 again," she reveals.

"We spent a lot of time talking about the hair, the clothes, and the makeup. I worked with such amazingly talented people that just a brush stroke would change my face a little bit.

"I looked at myself in the mirror one day and I didn't really realise we were doing the older Clare that day and I said 'Oh, I'm looking a little haggard', before being told it was paint."

Given the chance to travel back in time herself, Rachel says she's not keen, although she admits it would be fun to spy on her parents.

"I'd be afraid I would throw it all out of whack. I wouldn't want to mess with it too much," she says, laughing.

"But I would love to see my parents falling in love or seeing them as children. This film made me think about going back and seeing the people that you love in a different time, and how fun that would be."

Rachel - who played high school bully Regina in Mean Girls - was propelled to rising heights following the unexpected success of The Notebook, which then led to supporting roles in Wedding Crashers and The Family Stone.

She's also turned her hand to heavier films like Red Eye and State Of Play - decisions she feels were partially taken out of her hands.

"I want to try everything to be honest. Every genre that's available and possible," she says.

"I definitely believe in the power of energy, and that you are drawn to certain things for inexplicable reasons but in a very powerful way. I think everything happens for a reason."

She adds: "I don't know what it is exactly, but I know that things happen kind of miraculously sometimes. There's a balance of some hand guiding you somewhere, and at the same time, your own free will and taking the bull by the horns. I do think it's a combination of the two, that gets you wherever you are."

Fate or not, Rachel's status as one of Hollywood's most sought-after leading ladies will be cemented with the release of Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes in December, which sees her play a femme fatale who outwits the famous detective (Robert Downey Jr).

"It was so much fun because everything was so realistic and we were shooting in the real dungeons of London. I had the most beautiful costumes and everything was fairly authentic," she recalls.

While fans may view her as an incandescent presence on-screen, it's an opinion that the star is shy to embrace.

"Ha! Not to be too critical of myself, I don't see myself like that necessarily," she reveals.

Having acted since she was 12, Rachel doesn't see herself doing anything else.

"It's a constant journey for me, and a constant learning experience," she says.

"I'm always amazed that you wind up doing a role, where there's something in there that you needed to deal with, and you didn't realise that. I love that so much about acting.

"Not that it's therapy, but that you are subconsciously leading towards something, and that there's a powerful energy between you, and what you wind up doing in your life. And I think that cannot be denied."

Extra time - Rachel McAdams

Rachel Anne McAdams was born in Ontario, Canada, on November 17, 1978.

She took up competitive figure skating when she was four, but discovered her love for acting when she joined a theatre camp at the age of 12.

She auditioned for the role of Sue Storm in The Fantastic Four, but lost out on the part to Jessica Alba.

She has no interest in stripping off - she turned down a Vanity Fair cover with Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley after finding out that nudity was involved.

She once stalked a man to get his attention: "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."