McAdams nixed the likes of Mission Impossible, Casino Royale and The Devil Wears Prada – but there’d be no Game Night if things had gone differently
Hollywood etiquette dictates that when a Hollywood star passes on a role, they don’t talk about it. To do so wouldn’t be fair on the actor who eventually took the role, since this would doom them to an indefinite future of potentially invidious comparisons.
There are exceptions, of course. Matt Damon tells a nice story about how he didn’t want to star in Avatar, largely out of faux bitterness at the payday he missed out on. Brad Pitt, too, will admit that he turned down the role of Neo in The Matrix, but this is famously the only instance he’ll name. The other exception, of course, is Rachel McAdams. This is because Rachel McAdams will happily tell everyone all about the weird two years in her life where she basically turned down every great role going.
