Rachel McAdams

You know when you find a great dress, you’ve gotta hold on to it.

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

I actually love the audition process, so I’m so happy to fight for things. I would love to read something that I want to fight for, but lately the scripts are not that compelling.

[on filming Red Eye] I loved the action sequences, running though an airport in heels and all that stuff. That was really fun.

[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.

Yeah. I still live in Canada, so it’s not quite the same. And when I’m in L.A., I’m in a car; you don’t have the contact with the public. It’s not so bad. It’s still pretty much the same. I still feel pretty normal-ish.

Come on now! How could you be me and want to be someone else?

It’s also that comedians don’t have the kind of narcissism that actors have. They’re writers who perform their own material. It’s more interesting. And they’re sexy because they risk more. Stand-up comedians risk more than anyone.

I’d say I’m a bit of a fatalist but not as much as I was. I used to be like “whatever happens happens” and have that innate fatalistic outlook. But I think it’s more about what you are thinking in your own mind that is the most powerful aspect of controlling your own life.

I get crazy in a bookstore. It makes my heart beat hard because I want to buy everything.

My career has been a combination of hard work and timing. Working with Stevie Wonder at the Kennedy Center Honors was timing. The Tonight Show was timing. Carnegie Hall, that was timing. My marriage was timing. I was ready, I wanted to know what it was like.

Mom would kill me if I showed my navel.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve really worked toward balancing my life out more, having a little bit more time with friends, family and my boyfriend. There was a period of time when they were way down the list. It was all about music and touring and if everything fell by the wayside, so be it.

If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that… I believe in what I do, and I’ll say it.

My vocal style I haven’t tried to copy from anyone. It just developed until it became the girlish whine it is today.

I’m not a flowerchild or anything like that… whatever it was.

I was young when I first went to America. I was 19 years old, and I went crazy. I met The GTOs and my mind just snapped. I’m from a nowhere town in the Midlands and here were these girls with bare breasts blatantly coming on, and of course we went crazy.

I am looking for a man I couldn’t beat in a cage fight.

Working with people, the musical part is one thing but the personal part is totally different and just as critical. If the friendship is there and it’s a lasting friendship, then it will take care of itself.

Basically you have to suppress your own ambitions in order to be who you need to be.

When you go to the Oscars, don’t dress like you’re never going to go anywhere again. Don’t take such a big swing.