Watch out. Rachel McAdams will steal your heart. And no, she won't give it back. Otherwise known as the hot chick in The Hot Chick, and, well, a mean girl in Mean Girls, it's her searing turn in June's The Notebook that'll suspend romantic reality and make this pretty baby stand out.
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Try to blame it on the tear-jerking talent of Nicholas Sparks (the movie's based on his novel), but it's McAdams' performance--and her on-screen steam with Ryan Gosling--that'll zap you back into the I-can't-breathe-without-you fervor of first love.
"I was wrecked after I read the script," McAdams says, blonde wisps escaping her newsboy hat, requisite Uggs swallowing her gams. "It's a heartbreaker. But it's uplifting. And I do believe in really special love--this otherworldly thing no one understands but everyone wants. I'm a believer. I confess!" she laughs.
The 24-year-old Canadian also admits to once begging her parents to put her on Star Search ("I wanted it more than anything"), to falling for Shakespeare at summer camp ("Before that, I performed by doing dances in the backyard") and to resisting wanderlust until 22 when she hopped her first jet ("I stored up energy, so now I can be a gypsy").
Next, the sanguine beauty plays a bewitching bridesmaid in The Wedding Crashers alongside Owen Wilson, Christopher Walken and Vince Vaughn.
With a career hotter than a Victoria's Secret runway, the self-described A) sentimentalist, B) sugar-addict and C) rookie surfer might have a hard time escaping "It Girl" trappings. "I'd rather just sneak by that title," she says, all kittenish innocence. "I just don't know what that means. What do you have to do?"
What she doesn't realize is that she's already done it.
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Stephanie Scott