We all loved Regina George in Mean Girls despite her being, well, a mean girl. Her absurd rules of wearing only pink on Wednesdays or not wearing a tank top for two days in a row helped make the movie feel like an absurd yet highly entertaining high school flick. It takes a special someone to make people like the antagonist of a film. Enter Rachel McAdams.
Rachel McAdams has tons of iconic films to her name. From the tear-jerker The Notebook to the hilarious yet intense Game Night, Rachel McAdams knows how to play her characters with absolute perfection. However, there were some projects which she decided to turn down which went on to become massive hits, including Mission: Impossible III. Why? Well, she simply didn’t adhere to her personality.
Rachel McAdams in Mean Girls
Why Did Rachel McAdams Turn Down Mission: Impossible III?
Rachel McAdams
During a recent interview with Bustle, Rachel McAdams talked about the movies she turned down during her two-year-long break from Hollywood. Not only did she turn down Mission: Impossible III and an opportunity to star alongside Tom Cruise, but there were other films as well. These include Casino Royale, The Devil Wears Prada, Iron Man, and Get Smart.
Talking to Bustle, she stated that while she sometimes wishes she grabbed onto the opportunities, the eventual casting of the project makes her feel much better. The Wedding Crashers actress states that she felt guilty for not “capitalizing on the opportunity” but knew that working on those projects was not what she wanted at the time.
“There’s certainly things like, ‘I wish I’d done that.’ I step back and go, ‘That was the right person for that.’ I felt guilty for not capitalizing on the opportunity that I was being given, because I knew I was in such a lucky spot. But I also knew it wasn’t quite jiving with my personality and what I needed to stay sane.”
However, McAdams wasn’t always a hundred percent content with her decision. She, just like all of us, had a few windows of doubt where she wondered if she was doing the right thing. She stated that there were “anxious moments” where she thought whether she was “just throwing it all away.” McAdams concluded that it took her years to understand why she did what she did.
Rachel McAdams Wasn’t the Only One to Almost Star in the Film
Scarlett Johansson
While McAdams turned down the opportunity to be a part of the Mission: Impossible franchise, there was an actress who was all for the idea – Scarlett Johansson. Johansson was cast in Mission: Impossible III when Joe Carnahan was in charge. However, the director was later replaced by JJ Abrams, under whom the cast went through some changes.
Johansson was already busy training for stunts with Cruise, but Abrams wasn’t sure if his vision of the film had a place for the actress. Since the script had a ton of changes made to it, Abrams state,
“The script was rewritten. I’m a huge fan of each actor that they cast originally but to have kept the actors when we are reinventing the story would have been an odd process. To say, ‘Write a script with these people in mind for characters that haven’t been written’ just felt like we had to start over with a clean slate.”
Well, that was the end of the Mission: Impossible journey for Johansson and a few other actors. Fans believed that the actress was fired from the role but they later found out that Johansson decided to drop out due to extensive script changes and delays.
There’s also a rumor that Johansson dropped out of the film because Cruise invited her to join his Scientology church, which she refused.
