Rachel McAdams: stand back—silver-screen star in the making

As the queen bee at the crux of the new comedy Mean Girls, Rachel McAdams rules over a high school hive and wields popularity as a weapon. But growing up, this 25-year-old Canadian actress was a different kind of ice princess.

As a teenager in Ontario, McAdams spent most of her time competing as a solo figure skater. "High school was kind of hard," she admits. "I didn't have a group. I had me." Life loosened up a little when she joined a synchronized skating team--"We wore costumes and blue eye shadow up to our eyebrows, and a bottle of hair spray each"--but the sport's cutthroat culture eventually drove her from the rink and onto the stage.

Along with her supporting turn in Mean Girls, McAdams tears into her first Hollywood leading role, opposite Ryan Gosling, in next month's romantic drama The Notebook. Set in the 1940s and '50s, she plays a wealthy Southern belle who must choose between her first love and family loyalty. As for her own romances, she's not talking. "My first love? Oh, that's a secret," she says. "But you can't deny the power of your first love." Or the potential of a breakout performance.

Susan Johnston is a playwright living in New York City.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning