Hollywood protocol requires that actors remain silent about the roles they turn down. It wouldn’t be fair to the actor who eventually assumed the position if they were forever doomed to unfavorable comparisons to the original.
There are, of course, outliers. Matt Damon shares a charming tale about how he didn’t want to star in Avatar, mostly because he was pretending to be unhappy about the paycheck he didn’t get. Brad Pitt, too, has admitted that he passed up the opportunity to play Neo in The Matrix, albeit this is infamously the only case he has ever named. Rachel McAdams is the other notable outlier. This is because Rachel McAdams will gladly tell everyone about the strange two years of her life in which she declined virtually every excellent part available.
When Did She Turn Down The Movies?
Between 2006 and 2008, McAdams turned down five film roles. All of them were enormous and would have significantly impacted her professional path. Casino Royale, Iron Man, The Devil Wears Prada, Mission: Impossible III, and Get Smart are just some of the movies she’s declined roles in.
McAdams writes about her lost youth with mixed emotions in a new Bustle profile. “I realized I was in such a fortunate position that I felt awful for not making the most of the chance being offered,” she explained. But I also realized it wasn’t a good fit for who I am and my mental health requirements. Sometimes I worried I was making a colossal mistake and throwing everything away.
Should she, however, feel remorse for declining those parts? Most likely not. Get Smart can be instantly eliminated from consideration because it was a terrible movie that no one talks about anymore. She would have been a natural fit for the part that went to Michelle Monaghan in Mission: Impossible III (purely because everyone gets them confused). This could have been disastrous, but Monaghan’s job could have been more thrilling, to begin with, and now she only shows up in the new Mission: Impossible movies and does very little.
Casino Royale and The Devil Wears Prada can be disregarded as they found their ideal actors. Anne Hathaway’s almost superhuman desire to be liked by everyone she encounters makes her the perfect counterpoint for Meryl Streep in Prada. At the same time, Eva Green’s Vesper Lynd had a frigid aloofness that practically no other actor could touch.
Did She Make The Correct Decision?
Iron Man is the only option left. And, you know what? There, too, she has likely made the correct decision. If she had played Pepper Potts, Robert Downey Jr. and she would have been 14 years apart—nearly twice as much as the age gap between Downey and Gwyneth Paltrow. Yet, she may have auditioned for a different part, perhaps the one that went to Leslie Bibb. That would have been even more embarrassing because who remembers that Leslie Bibb appeared in Iron Man? The only downside to Rachel McAdams’ decision to reject Iron Man was that it made her eligible to star in the subpar Doctor Strange films, in which she was underutilized.
Yet, declining these offers undoubtedly hurt her career. After returning from her hiatus, she struggled to establish her footing by playing a series of unappreciated love interests. In The Vow, she was the woman who Channing Tatum loved. In About Time, she portrayed the female lead opposite Domhnall Gleeson. Because her character died to serve as an inspiration for Jake Gyllenhaal, she only had a small role in Southpaw. McAdams’s luck grew so terrible that she agreed to appear in True Detective’s worst season.
Wrapping Up
The question is, though. Would Rachel McAdams have had the same career trajectory that brought her to Game Night in 2018 if she had been a Bond girl? Well, of course not; she wouldn’t have been able to shake the 007 stereotypes and would have wasted the rest of her life in inane tragedies. It would have been a shame if she hadn’t been cast because Rachel McAdams in Game Night is the best acting ever. She was a natural fit for the role. The world would be very different if Rachel McAdams hadn’t played Annie in Game Night, but trying to picture Iron Man with her as Pepper Potts is entertaining at best. No matter how much she laments her past decisions, the fact that they lead her to Game Night proves everything is as it should be.
Also, Read: The Real Brittfit Net Worth
