Rachel McAdams

If I hurt someone, if I were to accidentally poke someone’s eye out, I would laugh. And then I’d say, ‘I’m sorry, I really do feel bad,’ but then I’m on the floor rolling.

[asked if she ever had any summer traditions when growing up] My family rented a cottage in Canada. They’d blare “Wake Up Little Susie” at seven in the morning throughout the entire campground. Everyone would roll over to the lodge and have sticky buns for breakfast, and then we’d jump on the trampoline all day long.

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 straight-forward fairytale.

The craziest thing I’ve ever done to get a guy’s attention? I admit I stalked someone. I showed up at a restaurant where I knew the guy worked, and we were actually good friends and had lost touch, and I pretended that I didn’t know he worked there. And then ran into him and, “Oh my God, you work here? I had no idea.” 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.

Nudity for fictional characters is as normal and mundane as eating breakfast. What bothers me is our culture’s obsession with nudity. It shouldn’t be a big deal, but it is. I think this overemphasis with nudity makes actors nervous. There’s the worry about seeing one’s body dissected, misrepresented, played and replayed on YouTube.

The most romantic thing, a lovely boy bought me a dress once. He got my measurements, actually they were from “The Notebook” and I had them sitting somewhere, and he found them and bought me this dress, tailor-made, this beautiful little black cocktail dress. And I thought that was very, very classy.

I do think things were meant to happen. I’m just this little girl from Tennessee, and here I am today. I think a lot of things are just out of your hands.

You could put a blond wig on a hot-water heater and some dude would try to f**k it.

I always said marriage should be a fifty-fifty proposition. He should be at least fifty years old, and have at least fifty-million dollars.

No, I was two years older than the other guys. I was a war baby. My family were a lot poorer than they were. I’d had to fight too hard for anything I had in my life and to smash things up for me.

If there are 10 people there, two or three are going to recognize you.

If you don’t know what it is, don’t mess with it

I look at an audience kind of like meeting my in-laws for the first time. You want to be yourself, but you still want to be somebody that they like. When I go onstage each night, I try my best to outguess my audience, and I like to feel in most cases like I’m a big guy with long rubber arms that I can reach around my audience and swing and sway with them – move them with me. And many nights, I can’t. Many nights I can. But you do like a good manager with a baseball team. You keep pulling pitchers, you keep trying.

First of all, you have to understand that I’m like anybody else. When I hear my voice on a record I absolutely loathe my voice. I cannot stand my voice.

All I could think about was, ‘I just wanna blow him away. I wanna make him proud, because I really wanna sign with Timbaland and spend the rest of my career making music with Tim.’

I forgot better shit than you ever thought of.

I’ve always wanted to be a stand-up comic on some levels as well and I know I can play and sing but when people see me and say, “I didn’t know you were so funny… You’re like a real entertainer,” that’s what I like more than all the other accolades.

News is not a game show. You don’t win a car if you happen to be right.

For my first show at ‘SNL’, I wrote a Bill Clinton sketch, and during our read-through, it wasn’t getting any laughs. This weight of embarrassment came over me, and I felt like I was sweating from my spine out. But I realized, ‘Okay, that happened, and I did not die.’ You’ve got to experience failure to understand that you can survive it.

I don’t know many singers who actually do like the sound of their own voice.

[on Sarah Palin returning to Fox News] First tonight, I and the rest of America woke up this morning in the worst way imaginable.