When a Hollywood star declines a position, they are expected to keep quiet about it according to Hollywood protocol. To do so would be unfair to the actor who ultimately played the part since it would condemn them to an endless lifetime of potentially demeaning comparisons.
Of course, there are exceptions. The reason Matt Damon didn’t want to be in Avatar as a star was partly due to his fictitious resentment about the potential payoff. Brad Pitt will also acknowledge that he declined the part of Neo in The Matrix, but this is infamously the only time he would mention it. Rachel McAdams is the other exception, of course. This is so that Rachel McAdams may tell everyone about the strange two years of her life, during which she essentially turned down every outstanding position that was available.
McAdams declined five projects in total from 2006 and 2008. All of them were significant and would have unquestionably changed the course of her professional life. She declined roles in the films Get Smart, Mission: Impossible III, The Devil Wears Prada, Casino Royale, and Iron Man.
McAdams reflects on her wasted years in a new Bustle profile with a combination of regret and sane perspective. Since I was in such a fortunate position, “I felt bad for not taking advantage of the chance that I was being given,” she said. But I also realised that it didn’t exactly fit with who I am and what I need to do to maintain my sanity. There were undoubtedly some worrying moments when I questioned whether I was really doing anything with it.
Should she feel bad about declining those roles, though? Virtually probably not. Get Smart is out of the question right away because it was a terrible movie that no one remembers in any case. She would have likely played the part in Mission: Impossible III that ultimately went to Michelle Monaghan (purely because everyone gets them confused). This was perhaps a dodged bullet because Monaghan’s role wasn’t all that thrilling and now includes her showing up in future Mission: Impossible flicks to accomplish virtually nothing at all.
On the grounds that their ideal actors were eventually discovered, films like Casino Royale and The Devil Wears Prada can similarly be written off. In Prada, Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway were the perfect counterpoints to each other because of Anne Hathaway’s almost superhuman need to be liked by everyone she encounters. Eva Green’s Vesper Lynd had a chilly aloofness to her that almost any other performer could match.
All that is left is Iron Man. And what about that? There, too, she most likely made the proper decision. She and Robert Downey Jr. would have been 14 years apart in age if she had played Pepper Potts, which is nearly twice as much time as there is between Downey and Gwyneth Paltrow. She might, however, have chosen a different role—one that Leslie Bibb ultimately ended up playing. Furthermore, nobody would have remembered Leslie Bibb from Iron Man, so that would have been worse. In actuality, the only drawback to Rachel McAdams passing on Iron Man was that it made her eligible to play the lead in the subpar Doctor Strange films, where she was unjustly wasted.
Nonetheless, it is clear that declining each of these opportunities had an effect on her career. As she got back from her hiatus, she struggled for a while to fit in with a variety of thankless love interest parts. In The Vow, she was Channing Tatum’s love interest. In the movie About Time, she portrayed Domhnall Gleeson’s love interest. She was only able to play Jake Gyllenhaal’s love interest for a brief period of time in Southpaw since her character had to pass away in order to serve as inspiration for his. McAdams’ situation deteriorated to the point where she even agreed to participate in the worst True Detective season.
But consider this. Would Rachel McAdams have had the kind of career that ultimately took her to 2018’s Game Night if she had been a Bond girl? No, of course not. She would have struggled to break out of the 007 stereotype and would have spent the rest of her life stumbling through pointless tragedies. And that would have been tragic since, as everyone is aware, Rachel McAdams is the best actor to ever play any role. She was a natural for the role. Trying to picture what Iron Man would be like with Rachel McAdams as Pepper Potts might be entertaining, but it is genuinely difficult to conceive what the world would be like if Rachel McAdams had not portrayed Annie in Game Night. Any misgivings she might have about her past decisions, the fact that they brought her to Game Night is evidence that everything in the universe is functioning as it should.
