Rachel McAdams arrived in Hollywood with three back-to-back performances that announced her as one of the most naturally gifted comic and dramatic actresses of her cohort, a Canadian performer whose warmth and timing made her impossible to ignore. She broke through with Mean Girls (2004), The Notebook (2004), and Wedding Crashers (2005) within 15 months, then followed with Red Eye (2005), Midnight in Paris (2011), Spotlight (2015), and Doctor Strange (2016), earning an Oscar nomination for the first of those last two. The early run remains one of the more remarkable debut sequences in recent Hollywood history.

On screen, McAdams operates through a brightness and emotional generosity that makes her characters feel fully inhabited even in films built primarily around spectacle. Her dark eyes, warm smile, and an openness that the camera responds to immediately give her a likability that has survived every genre she has moved through, from rom-com to political drama to superhero ensemble. She has worked more selectively in recent years, but the affection surrounding her early work has only deepened with time.