A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was unveiled on Tuesday honoring Rachel McAdams for a film acting career highlighted by a best supporting actress Oscar nomination.
McAdams got emotional while accepting the honor, giving thanks to her parents, who were in attendance.
“When I was about 8 years old, growing up in tiny little St. Thomas, Canada, I wrote my parents a very desperate letter, asking them to figure out how to fulfill my greatest dream — to be on Ed McMahon’s `Star Search’,” McAdams said. “They were of course incredibly supportive. I do want to freeze time for a second because you only get a few of these moments in life to thank you on a stage for everything. All of it. All of it is because of you and the love you gave us and the beautiful childhood you gave us, and for believing in me long before I could grasp how to believe in myself.”
McAdams was also joined at the ceremony at 6922 Hollywood Blvd., between Highland Avenue and Orange Drive, near the El Capitan Theatre, by director Sam Raimi and actor Domhnall Gleeson.
The ceremony came 10 days before the release of “Send Help,” a psychological thriller directed by Raimi in which McAdams portrays an overlooked and undervalued employee who with her dismissive, arrogant new boss (Dylan O’Brien) are the only survivors of a plane crash on a deserted island.
Raimi also directed McAdams in the 2022 Marvel film, “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” in which she reprised her role of emergency surgeon Christine Palmer from the 2016 Marvel film “Doctor Strange.”
Gleeson and McAdams co-starred in the 2013 romantic science fiction comedy-drama “About Time.”
The star is the 2,833rd since the completion of the Walk of Fame in 1961 with the initial 1,558 stars.
Born Nov. 17, 1978, in London, Ontario, and raised about 17 miles south in St. Thomas, Ontario, where she was involved with theater while growing up, McAdams received a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from York University in Toronto in 2001.
McAdams made her television debut in the unaired MTV pilot “Shotgun Love Dolls,” filmed during her spring break from college in 2001. She made her film debut later that year in the Italian-Canadian comedy, “My Name Is Tanino,” as an American girl vacationing in Italy who an Italian liberal arts student (Corrado Fortuna) falls in love with.
Her Hollywood film debut came in the 2002 comedy “The Hot Chick” as a catty high school student who swaps bodies with a small-time criminal (Rob Schneider).
McAdams rose to fame in 2004 with her portrayals of “queen bee” Regina George in the comedy “Mean Girls” and 17-year-old heiress Allie Hamilton in the romantic drama ‘The Notebook.”
The following year McAdams appeared in the comedy “Wedding Crashers.”
McAdams received a best supporting actress Oscar nomination in 2016 for her portrayal of investigative journalist Sacha Pfeiffer in “Spotlight,” losing out to Alicia Vikander for her performance as Danish painter Gerda Wegener in “The Danish Girl.”
McAdams’ other film credits include “Midnight in Paris”; “Sherlock Holmes” and “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows”; “The Little Prince”; “Morning Glory”; “The Time Traveler’s Wife”; and “The Family Stone.”
McAdams’ television credits include the second season of the HBO anthology crime drama “True Detective.”
McAdams received a best actress in a play Tony Award nomination in 2024 for her Broadway debut, playing the title role in “Mary Jane,” a woman caring for her chronically ill young son.
