McAdams was born in London, Ontario, and grew up in nearby St. Thomas. Her father, Lance, is a truck driver, and her mother, Sandy (Sandra), is a nurse. She has a younger sister, Kayleen, and younger brother, Daniel.

At the age of four, she took up competitive figure skating. She took up acting at age thirteen at a summer theater camp. When the company extended to a year-round company, she was invited to continue with them. During her senior year at York University in Toronto, she played a child in The Piper - a workshop led by a creative team from Toronto's Necessary Angel Theatre Company. She attended Central Elgin Collegiate Institute in St. Thomas from grade nine to OAC and starred in the award winning student production "I live in a Little Town". Later she graduated from York University with honours and a B.F.A. degree in theatre. She also attended Original Kids Theatre Company in London, Ontario, as well as David Rothenberg's on-camera acting class in Toronto with fellow actors Scott Speedman, Kenneth Mitchell, Polly Shannon and David Sutcliffe.


Career
She had a large role in the film The Hot Chick, alongside Rob Schneider, but her career really took off when she starred as "Regina George", "queen-bee" in 2004's Mean Girls. She starred opposite Hollywood It-Girl Lindsay Lohan. McAdams was told to partly model the character of Regina George after Alec Baldwin's performance in Glengarry Glen Ross (1992). Mean Girls got McAdams's name into many homes in the United States, and she won rave reviews for her performance.

McAdams had previously appeared in the Canadian television series "Slings and Arrows", alongside Paul Gross. She played a main role in the first season, but due to her rising stardom was written out of the second season, appearing in only the first episode.

She followed Mean Girls with the film adaptation of Nicholas Sparks' novel The Notebook, alongside Ryan Gosling. The pair would later continue their on-screen romance, rumoured to have started after they shared a passionate kiss onstage when accepting the MTV movie award for "best kiss."

In 2005, she played Owen Wilson's love interest in Wedding Crashers. Rachel then starred in the suspense thriller Red Eye as Lisa Reisert, a young woman held captive aboard a red-eye jet by criminal-for-hire and assassin Jackson Rippner (played by Cillian Murphy), whose name is a pseudonym based on Jack the Ripper. Her most recent role is in the comedy The Family Stone where she stars alongside Diane Keaton, Craig T. Nelson, Sarah Jessica Parker, Dermot Mulroney, Luke Wilson and Claire Danes.

McAdams abruptly opted out of a cover shoot for Vanity Fair alongside two other Hollywood "It girls," Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley, upon finding out it was to be nude. Tom Ford, artistic director for the cover, instead appeared with them. Ford had prearranged the shoot with McAdams's rep, Wolf Kasteller s Amy Van Iden. When McAdams appeared on set and discovered it was nude, she politely declined, according to Keira Knightley. She also reportedly fired Van Iden.

McAdams turned down the role of the Bond girl in Casino Royale and was replaced by Eva Green. She was also considered for the role as Katherine Thorn in the remake of The Omen and was going to star in The Last Kiss but dropped out due to scheduling conflicts. Jacinda Barrett then stepped in to replace her. She will soon be seen in the 2007 movie Marriage.


Personal life
McAdams currently lives in Toronto, Canada. She is a former vegetarian, and is currently dating fellow Canadian actor Ryan Gosling. Both were born in St. Joseph's Hospital in London, Ontario. She moved to L.A. after she started dating Ryan Gosling.

Awards/Achievements
McAdams received popular acclaim for both roles and was honoured for her work, most recently a record number of five nominations and three wins at the MTV Movie Awards in 2005. McAdams beat competition including Beyoncé Knowles, Jessica Alba, and Jessica S

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Considering his star-making turn as a neo-Nazi skinhead in 2001's controversial film The Believer, it is hard to believe that Ryan Gosling began his career as a member of The Mickey Mouse Club, and as star of such weightless kiddie programming as Breaker High and Young Hercules.

Born on November 12, 1980, in London, Ontario, and raised in a Mormon household, young Ryan Thomas Gosling was always encouraged to pursue creative outlets. He learned how to play the guitar, took singing and dancing lessons and at the age of 13, beat out 17,000 applicants to join the cast of The Mickey Mouse Club alongside future superstars Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake.

When The Mickey Mouse Club was cancelled in 1994, Ryan appeared on TV programs such as Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Ready or Not, Goosebumps and Road to Avonlea, for which he was nominated for a Gemini Award. He also won starring roles on Breaker High (1997), a TV series about a high school on a cruise ship, and Young Hercules (199 , in which he played the muscle-bound title character. But he repeatedly resisted offers of teen flicks and WB-friendly TV pilots, and even turned down an invitation from future Backstreet Boy A.J. McLean to audition for the boy band.

In 2000, Ryan appeared in his first feature, in a small role as a high school football player. That film was Remember the Titans, starring Denzel Washington as the football coach of a newly racially integrated high school.

The following year, Ryan was singled out from among 150 other actors, for what would become his breakthrough role in Henry Bean's The Believer. Ryan played Danny Balint, a young Jew who becomes a neo-Nazi skinhead. The film premiered at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Special Grand Jury prize. But its next high profile screening was scheduled for September 11, 2001 at the Toronto International Film Festival. All screenings that day were cancelled and The Believer was pulled from the rest of the festival schedule because of its violent scenes. The film's unlucky timing and incendiary subject matter caused potential distributors to shy away. The Believer eventually aired on the cable-TV channel Showtime in late 2001, and Fireworks Pictures gave it limited US release in May, 2002.

Despite never having been allowed a large audience, The Believer was hailed for its directness and the impossible contradiction at its core. It was Ryan's performance, however, which propelled the film. Portraying a character most people would consider inhuman and completely unsympathetic, could make or break the career of a struggling young actor. His performance was described as "riveting", "feral", "impressive and terrifying", "enigmatic", "scarily convincing", "passionate" and "fierce". In 2002, Ryan was nominated for Best Male Lead at the Independant Spirit Awards.

Playing Danny Balint was a startling contrast from the roles Ryan had played as a teenager, and the pressure was on to follow up with another performance in another film of equal magnitude and depth. Ryan was able to satisfy both his own standards and those of his critics by following up with a trio of high profile dramatic roles. The strength of these performances, - always strangely graceful, charismatic and subtle - added to his reputation as a powerful young actor.

In the acclaimed drama The Slaughter Rule (2002), he played yet another high school football player for whom everything suddenly seems to go wrong. He drowns his sorrows in a combination of self-pity, tequila and violence until he meets Gideon Ferguson (David Morse) who helps get him back on track.

In Barbet Schroeder's Murder By Numbers (2002), Ryan played a bored rich high school student who teams up with a serial killer obsessed classmate (Michael Pitt), to plan

The Notebook is an epic love story centered around an older man who reads aloud to an older, invalid woman whom he regularly visits. From a faded notebook, the old man's words bring to life the story about a couple who is separated by World War II, and is then passionately reunited, seven years later, after they have taken different paths. Though her memory has faded, his words give her the chance to relive her turbulent youth and the unforgettable love they shared.

As teenagers, Allie (Rachel McAdams) and Noah (Ryan Gosling) begin a whirlwind courtship that soon blossoms into tender intimacy. The young couple is quickly separated by Allie's upper-class parents who insist that Noah isn't right for her. Several years pass, and, when they meet again, their passion is rekindled, forcing Allie to choose between her soul mate and class order. This beautiful tale has a particularly special meaning to an older gentleman (James Garner) who regularly reads the timeless love story to his aging companion (Gena Rowlands).