Rachel McAdams

I’m a sucker for those sweeping love stories. When I read the script (The Notebook), I couldn’t stop crying! I just had such a powerful, instantaneous reaction – it was written so well.

I gossiped when I was given a chance because I wasn’t popular so the few times someone would invite you into the group to have a conversation it was usually about someone else and you just joined in because it was great to be a part of something, and that I feel bad for.

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.

My life comes to a screeching halt when I’m not making movies. I really like to ride my bike around town, garden, cook, and play ultimate frisbee.

[on which film had a bigger impact on her career – “The Notebook” or “Mean Girls”] For me personally it would be The Notebook. That was something I was dying to do when I read the script. I worked with so many amazing people and people responded so well to that film, and continue to. In terms of an impact on my career, that was significant. Mean Girls speaks to a really large audience, which is the kids and they eat that stuff up. I don’t know. It’s hard to choose.

I was not popular in high school, I know every actress says that, but really, I was a big geek.

You gotta wear the right trousers if you’re gonna be a rock star.

I like you baby, just not more than my work right now

It is an impressively arrogant move to conclude that just because you don’t like something, it is empirically not good. I don’t like Chinese food, but I don’t write articles trying to prove it doesn’t exist.

This is just to get the kids ready to play. It’s not about the score of the games. We want the boys to learn what they can from this. It helps the coaches see where we’re at and what we need to be working on.

Mean girls are always going to exist, and you can’t fight them. Don’t lose yourself in going along with them just to hide, because you won’t feel good about that either. But there are people like you out there, trust me. When I was in school, I felt like I was the only one, and I got to college, and a whole new world opened up for me, and I’ve never, ever felt that way again. I did theater outside of school, and I think that was my salvation as well. I found people that had the same interests and respected each other. It exists, and keep trying to find it, because it’s worth it not to succomb.

You can only live on the past for so long, and we kind of stretched our luck on that. We think we’re on the way back, but it’s just a matter of how quickly things come together. Common sense tells you it’s not going to happen overnight because we’re trying to catch up.

The mind is an erogenous zone.

I want to thank my parents for somehow raising me to have confidence that is disproportionate with my looks and abilities.

I’m just a regular girl. Some days I’m super strong; some days I’m super insecure. I just speak my truth and if people like it, they like it, and if they bash it, they bash it.

Never have doubted it, even when the plane crash happened. I wasn’t mad at God. I just knew that there was a reason that I didn’t know about why it happened.

I love Led Zeppelin, they were four prodigiously talented musicians. The magical combination of Jimmy Page and Robert Plant underpinned by the best rhythm section, John Paul Jones on bass and the best rock n’roll drummer in the world, John Bonham.

There’s not a lot of towns that I can go to and take family – too many incongruous knocks on doors – “Hello, honey. Have you missed me?”

I can do anything I want to do really, I might as well.

There is no doubt about precisely when folks began racing each other in automobiles. It was the day they built the second automobile.

[on Amy Poehler] Not only is she not afraid to look silly, she’s not afraid to let you throw her in the air like a basketball and catch her.