It's funny the things the Internet likes to proclaim.
— Rachel McAdams
I've actually never played a time traveler, for all the time travelling movies I've done.
I don't really desire things. I prefer to spend my money on experiences, on meals or travel.
I love those preliminary conversations about who a character is. You try on wigs, shoes, and clothes. It's preferable when it's not about looking pretty. It can get a little dull to just be cute.
I love stories with love in them. I just prefer those films. Every so often, I come across a film where there's no love story. It doesn't have to be romantic, but there's a lack of love, and I don't get that.
My mother's parents died when I was quite young, so I would like to be able to go back and know those people as an adult.
My parents opened a bank account for me when I was really little, and I think I paid for some of my university education with my savings. I've always been a bit of a saver.
I grew up in a very small town and didn't realise till later that I had an adventurous side. When I went to theatre school at 18, I came into my own and let loose.
I had a lovely childhood. For family holidays, we went as far as the car could take us - we would drive to Florida, even though it would take three days. I didn't know we didn't have a lot of money because there was always food on the table. I didn't have a lot of stuff, but I did figure skating for a long time, and I always had my skates.
I think there's something really powerful and refreshing about a woman who is unapologetic.
I prefer to be a villainess. There's something a bit more delicious about their wickedness.
I try to shut out ideas about why you should do things. Trying to do good architecture and really designing a career? There's some attention to be paid to that, but I don't think it's everything.
My mother never put an emphasis on looks. She let us grow up on our own time line. She never forced any beauty regimen into my world.
What bothers me is our culture's obsession with nudity. It shouldn't be a big deal, but it is. I think this overemphasis with nudity makes actors nervous. There's the worry about seeing one's body dissected, misrepresented, played and replayed on the Internet.
I feel like I'm going backwards, actually, as I get older. I'm regressing. I feel more and more like a kid, which is kind of a fun feeling.
I'm not an amazing cook. But I can follow a recipe!
A kiss with anyone, on or off camera, can be intimidating. I've been kissing for nearly two decades now, and I'm always convinced I'm not doing it right. Chemistry is so important in a great kiss. You can act your way through anything, but it's hard with a kiss.
You have to turn the noise off a little bit. Fortunately, I'm not really on social media. I've been able to live in a bit of a black hole.
At nine years old, I was presented an opportunity to move to Toronto to train for pairs dancing. As soon as I heard that that's what it entailed, I was out of there. It's like a past life. I hung up my skates and never looked back.
I need to have better knife skills... for vegetables.
I always wanted pink hair.
When you're playing music through the streets of London at 2 o'clock in the morning, there's something so cool and magical about that. It takes you to a special place very quickly.
I was just finishing up 'Spotlight' in Toronto - I finished it on a Tuesday and started 'True Detective' on a Friday. So I was missing rehearsals, unfortunately, which I hate and why I never like to work back-to-back.
I'm from a very close-knit family, and there was something very... I guess you could say normal, about it, and I so appreciate that. We all ate dinner together every single night, and my mom stayed at home with us. I owe a lot to my parents.
I was 12 when it really hit me. I did children's theatre camp during the summers and played a fairy in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.' The next summer, I played Clytemnestra in 'Agamemnon' and I was like, 'OK, this is amazing.'
I don't really want to repeat myself. For the most part, I always want to be doing something new. But there aren't a lot of gritty roles out there for women, and they are so fun to play, everyone wants them.
With a film, you just don't have time to build sympathy for the character. But I think we're moving away from that in TV. With TV, you have a little more leeway to allow them to rise and fall and rise again and be much more complicated beings.
I love the exploration of someone who has such a different background from you. That exploration runs to compassion and to cracking yourself open and creating more understanding of how weird and amazing life is.
It's often out of my own insecurity. If I'm picky, it's for that reason. I want to be able to bring my best to the table. So if I'm not connecting to something, then I'm not gonna hold up my end of the bargain, and that's really embarrassing.
It's a compulsion. I'm always changing parts of me. Even when I was young, I wanted to change my hair color. I was so determined that I dyed my hair with Kool-Aid.
I personally think you can have a really rich and full life with no abs. Abs are for wimps.
I've had heartbreaking auditions where they don't even look at you. You're out before you're in.
Running through airports with pounds of luggage - that's a good workout.
During a movie, chemistry is so important, and yet they just assume actors can fake their way through it. That doesn't always work.
It's the messiness of life that ultimately leads you to the most interesting things. Everyone asks what you would do over, and I don't know because then you have this story to tell, and if you did everything over and made it perfect, what would you talk about?
I look at the world through a green lens now, but you can't make yourself crazy. That feeling of green guilt can be really inhibiting. It's about a changing mind-set, remembering to turn off the water when you are brushing your teeth.
I definitely was in the sequined, bedazzled era. We would put blue eye shadow up our eyebrows and glitter all over our faces. I probably put more effort into my skating outfits than my clothes.
Sure, I got lost, which is an actor's worst nightmare. But it is a gift as well, because great things come out of being lost and unsure, especially if you have a controlling side or a perfectionist side, which plenty of us do.
What I love about film is that everybody often connects to something so different, and things you couldn't anticipate when you were making the film, so you just make it as honest as possible.
I've really gotten to play a lot of different things, starting with 'Southpaw.' For 'Spotlight,' I got to play this amazing journalist, Sacha Pfeiffer, who worked at the 'Boston Globe' when they broke the story about the sex scandal in the Catholic Church.
It's always disappointing when your work is not received as you hope it would be.
I watched a lot of soap operas like 'General Hospital' and 'Days Of Our Lives.' When it came to movies, my parents were quite strict. They would watch 'Flash Dance' but wouldn't let us see the whole film because Jennifer Beals' character was a stripper. It was so funny when I finally saw the whole film. I thought she was a ballerina!
With any project I work on - not just 'True Detective' - I don't feel the need just to play a strong woman. I don't want the audience to say, 'Oh, she was so strong.' I want to play characters that are flawed and interesting.
You want people to buy you as just about anything. So if they think that you're one thing, it's hard to slip into, you know, all these other things.
What I love is dropping into someone else's life and exploring it.
I'd grown up doing children's theater there, and I always imagined myself being artistic director of a children's theater company.
I definitely believe that you are drawn to certain things for inexplicable reasons, but in a very powerful way. I don't know what it is exactly, but I know that things happen kind of miraculously sometimes, and so I'm willing to believe that there's something pretty magical out there.
I confess I am a romantic. I love romance, and I think it's really fun and delicious and some of my favorite films are love stories. I think that you just get a chance to fall in love with the characters so much and you get to explore their lives so deeply.
The physical part of comedy is as hard as a lot of action movies. It scares me, but in a way that I like.
I drink maple syrup. Then I'm hyper so I just run around like crazy and work it all off.
