Rachel McAdams

I wanted to be a secretary, I love paper clips and staplers

You know, I have some issues. But I just love to play different characters all the time, and I try not to repeat myself too much.

I did (training in) tennis, ballet, swing dancing, piano, art class and etiquette. I also did French dialect, but then it was mixing me up with my Southern dialect, so we stuck to Southern!

[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’m waiting for them to make ‘Thundercats’. I would love to be Cheetara.

I want to work with great directors and try not to put too much pressure on myself and just read things for the story and recognize when I’m drawn to something for the right reasons and try to maintain some sanity.

I really love cursing a lot. But as I get older, I realize it’s a little unseemly for women of a certain age.

If I didn’t do what I do, I wouldn’t be as young as I am.

I don’t want to cover up anymore. Not my face, not my mind, not my soul, not my thoughts, not my dreams, not my struggles, not my emotional growth. Nothing.

I must say, as a point of pride, that I didn’t get the job because I was a woman. I got the job because Amy Poehler moved to New York with the Upright Citizens Brigade and I was the next best thing.

If we don’t get actively involved to at least mitigate Trump’s damage, things will not be OK. And yes, the sun will rise each day, but the continuing rotation of the earth should not be your baseline expectation of American society.

(While accepting the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for Good Will Hunting) Most of all, I want to thank my father, up there, the man who when I said I wanted to be an actor, he said, ‘Wonderful. Just have a back-up profession like welding.’

I realized what Led Zeppelin was about around the end of our first U.S. tour. We started off not even on the bill in Denver, and by the time we got to New York we were second to Iron Butterfly, and they didn’t want to go on!

Right now, I do not like kids at all. I mean, I love my fans and everything, but when you have kids following you around all day, it’s like, “Ugh, kids!” Maybe that will change when I get older.

I would not trade any of these features for anybody else’s. I wouldn’t trade the small thin-lipped mouth that makes me resemble my nephew. I wouldn’t even trade the acne scar on my right cheek, because that recurring zit spent more time with me in college than any boy ever did.

Starting a new studio was a thrilling challenge, but it was more stressful than fun. I never took a salary, a bonus or expenses. I learned never to do anything you’re not passionate about.

Easter is very important to me, it’s a second chance.

I keep forgetting I’m speaking in an American accent sometimes. The dangerous thing is that you end up forgetting what your real accent is after a while! It’s really strange; I’ve never done a job in an American accent before.

In my neighborhood if you’re too aggressive, you intimidate someone, they kill you. Or if you decide to be emotional and you start crying, you’re a victim. You know, the kid in the schoolyard that doesn’t want to fight always leaves with a black eye. You have to find a way to stay in the middle, somewhere where people just don’t mess with you because they know that you don’t have a problem with it if it goes there.

An iPhone would be a more coherent president of the United States.

I’m the closest that hip-hop is getting to God. In some situations I’m like a ghetto Pope.