Quotes from Rachel McAdams

I watched a lot of soap operas like 'General Hospital' and 'Days Of Our Lives.' When it came to movies, my parents were quite strict. They would watch 'Flash Dance' but wouldn't let us see the whole film because Jennifer Beals' character was a stripper. It was so funny when I finally saw the whole film. I thought she was a ballerina!

I look at the world through a green lens now, but you can't make yourself crazy. That feeling of green guilt can be really inhibiting. It's about a changing mind-set, remembering to turn off the water when you are brushing your teeth.

What I love about film is that everybody often connects to something so different, and things you couldn't anticipate when you were making the film, so you just make it as honest as possible.

With a film, you just don't have time to build sympathy for the character. But I think we're moving away from that in TV. With TV, you have a little more leeway to allow them to rise and fall and rise again and be much more complicated beings.

I use filming as an excuse to take classes. I got my certification in sailing for 'Wedding Crashers,' and now I can handle a 26-foot boat. I played a seamstress once, so I took sewing classes. I love dipping into these other lives.

I've discovered as I've grown up that life is far more complicated than you think it is when you're a kid. It isn't just a straightforward fairytale.

I personally think you can have a really rich and full life with no abs. Abs are for wimps.

I have a certain curiosity for life that drives me and propels me forward.

I've been given lots of great advice, in my life. As an actor, just being as honest and as present as you can be.

I love auditioning. Since 'The Notebook' and 'Wedding Crashers,' I don't have to audition anymore, and I miss it. You get to show your interpretation of the character. I get nervous when I don't audition. What if they hate what I want to do?

It's funny the things the Internet likes to proclaim.

I love the exploration of someone who has such a different background from you. That exploration runs to compassion and to cracking yourself open and creating more understanding of how weird and amazing life is.

I confess I am a romantic. I love romance, and I think it's really fun and delicious and some of my favorite films are love stories. I think that you just get a chance to fall in love with the characters so much and you get to explore their lives so deeply.

What I love is dropping into someone else's life and exploring it.

During a movie, chemistry is so important, and yet they just assume actors can fake their way through it. That doesn't always work.

I can be quite surprised by what makes me cry, but it's usually spiritual things.

I did do some Shakespeare on film, it's really difficult. It's really interesting, because I was doing a series in Canada called 'Slings and Arrows' and it was about a company based around the Stratford Festival.

I prefer to be a villainess. There's something a bit more delicious about their wickedness.

I love those preliminary conversations about who a character is. You try on wigs, shoes and clothes. It's preferable when it's not about looking pretty. It can get a little dull to just be cute. We talk about things like, maybe my character can't afford these Christian Louboutins.

I love those preliminary conversations about who a character is. You try on wigs, shoes, and clothes. It's preferable when it's not about looking pretty. It can get a little dull to just be cute.

You really don't have a life when you're working. I always think "oh, I'm gonna see everybody on my days off. I'm gonna read so many books and see so many films" and then three months go by.

There's no one who's ever been significantly in my life for whom I don't have a sort of tenderness because they helped to shape who I am.

I definitely believe that you are drawn to certain things for inexplicable reasons, but in a very powerful way. I don't know what it is exactly, but I know that things happen kind of miraculously sometimes, and so I'm willing to believe that there's something pretty magical out there.

Russell Crowe likes to tell jokes, which I can't. I can't remember a joke to save my life. I don't have a brain for it.