Rachel McAdams Turned Down ‘Iron Man,’ ‘Casino Royale,’ ‘Mission: Impossible’ and ‘Devil Wears Prada’ in Two-Year Period: ‘I Felt Guilty’

variety.com:

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Nicholas Hoult recently made headlines for revealing he lost roles in “The Batman,” “Mission: Impossible 7” and “Top Gun: Maverick” all in a row, but that’s nothing compared to the handful of A-list projects Rachel McAdams consecutively turned down.

As revealed in her new Bustle profile, McAdams turned down offers for “The Devil Wears Prada,” “Casino Royale,” “Mission: Impossible III,” “Iron Man” and “Get Smart” in the two-year period where she moved back to Canada following a rise in Hollywood with “Mean Girls,” “The Notebook” and more. “There’s certainly things like ‘I wish I’d done that,’” McAdams said. “[But] I step back and go, ‘That was the right person for that.’” All five movies which McAdams rejected, released between 2006 and 2008, ended up being box office hits, with “Casino Royale” reigniting the Bond franchise with Daniel Craig in the role (presumably McAdams was up for Eva Green’s role) and the first “Iron Man” launching the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

McAdams waited to enter the superhero universe until 2016’s “Doctor Strange” and reprised the role of Dr. Christine Palmer in 2022’s “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.” “I felt guilty for not capitalizing on the opportunity that I was being given, because I knew I was in such a lucky spot,” McAdams said about turning down these films and taking a two-year break from Hollywood right as her career was surging. “But I also knew it wasn’t quite jiving with my personality and what I needed to stay sane.

There were definitely some anxious moments of wondering if I was just throwing it all away, and why was I doing that? It’s taken years to understand what I intuitively was doing.” McAdams harbors no regrets, and many of