Rachel McAdams is opening up about taking a hiatus from acting at the peak of her fame.
The actor — who stars in the upcoming film adaptation of Judy Blume’s classic coming-of-age novel “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” — explained to Bustle in a story published Tuesday that she turned down several high-profile roles, even as she felt “guilty for not capitalizing” on the opportunities.
One of those roles was in 2006’s “The Devil Wears Prada,” which McAdams was offered three times in the wake of her “Mean Girls” and “The Notebook” fame in 2004.
Instead of taking the role of Andy Sachs ― which would ultimately go to Anne Hathaway ― McAdams left for her native Canada and ended up taking a two-year break from Hollywood.
McAdams implied to Bustle that she did this for the sake of her own mental health.
“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. “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?” she added. “It’s taken years to understand what I intuitively was doing.”
“Devil Wears Prada” director David Frankel told Entertainment Weekly in 2021 that studio execs were dead set on casting McAdams as Andy.
“We started negotiating with Annie to make a deal, and that didn’t go well with the studio,” Frankel said. “We offered it to Rachel McAdams three times. The studio was determined to have her, and she was determined not to do it.”
“The Devil Wears Prada” wasn’t the only high-profile movie McAdams passed on during her hiatus.
McAdams told Bustle she also passed on roles in films like “Casino Royale,” “Mission: Impossible III,” “Get Smart” and “Iron Man,” all of which were released between 2006 and 2008.
McAdams emphasized to Bustle how hard it was for her not to accept these jobs.
“There’s certainly things like ‘I wish I’d done that,’” she said. But she noted that due to the success of some of these films, casting directors probably made the right choice with other actors.
“I step back and go, ‘That was the right person for that,’” she said.
To read McAdams’ profile in full, head over to Bustle.