Rachael McAdams was born October 7, 1976 to a truck driver and a nurse in London, Ontario, Canada.

McAdams warmed to the spotlight early on by taking up competitive skating at just four years old. Though she would remain on the ice well into her teens, the toll of constant competition eventually frazzled her nerves, and she soon began gravitating toward the stage.

During her senior year at the York University in Toronto, she played a child in The Piper - a workshop led by a creative team from Toronto's Necessary Angel Theatre Company. She attended Central Elgin Collegiate Institute in St. Thomas from grade nine to OAC, and later graduated from York University with honours and a B.F.A degree in theatre

After climbing the credits to make her feature debut in My Name is Tanino, McAdams was nominated for a Genie award (the Canadian equivalent of an Oscar) for her performance in 2002's Perfect Pie. The film, which cast her as a small-town girl whose best friend makes the big time by becoming a celebrated opera singer, provided McAdams with her breakout role, and she soon set her sights on Hollywood.

Rachel McAdams made a move to weekly television in 2003 with a supporting role in Slings and Arrows before once again returning to torment the unpopular crowd in 2004's Mean Girls. A big-screen adaptation of Rosalind Wiseman's popular book Queen Bees and Wannabes, the film was also notable as the screenwriting debut of Saturday Night Live writer/cast member Tina Fey.

She had a large role in the film The Hot Chick, alongside Rob Schneider, but her career really took off when she starred as "Regina George", "queen-bee" and the resident bitch of her school, in the 2004 hit Mean Girls.