Rachel McAdams

Real name: Rachel MacAdams

Birthday: 17 November, 1978

Birth city: St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada

Height: 5' 3" (160 cm)

Rachel McAdams ('Regina' in "Mean Girls") captured the attention of Hollywood, literally overnight. On her first trip to LA from her native Toronto, she landed the starring role in a major studio comedy, The Hot Chick in which she played a popular and self-absorbed cheerleader who wakes up one day to find that she has switched bodies with a man in his 30s.

McAdams was raised in a small town near London, Ontario. At the age of four, she took up figure skating and skated competitively throughout high school. She always knew she wanted to be an actress, and when a summer theater camp finally opened nearby, she was performing in productions of Shakespeare at the age of 13.

McAdams went on to York University, appearing in numerous student films and stage productions, where she graduated with honors with a B.F.A. degree in theater, which remains her first love. She landed her first professional onscreen role as a girl with bulimia in the Disney series "The Famous Jett Jackson," and followed with a pilot for MTV.

She recently completed The Notebook starring Ryan Gosling, Gena Rowlands, and James Garner. Based on the best-selling Nicholas Sparks' novel of the same name, "The Notebook" follows a young couple who meet in their teens and are reunited after World War II.