Back in 2006, Rachel McAdams appeared to be at the height of her career. She’d just starred in a string of hits including Mean Girls, The Notebook and Wedding Crashers, and she had the kind of success that most performers could only dream of. Her next move? To go back to Canada and take a break, spending two years largely out of the spotlight.

In a new interview, McAdams has opened up about her decision to step back from her career in the middle of a winning streak, and her comments are a testament to the power of knowing when to say ‘no’.

As well as turning down roles in films like The Devil Wears Prada (the part of Andy, of course, ultimately went to Anne Hathaway), Casino Royale, Mission: Impossible III, Get Smart and Iron Man, McAdams was famously set to appear on the cover of Vanity Fair in 2006 alongside Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley; when she learned that the other women had agreed to pose naked, something McAdams wasn’t comfortable doing, she walked away from the set. 

“I guess I always had a sense that it would be OK; either it’s going to work out or it’s not,” McAdams told Bustle, adding that her break from acting helped her to feel empowered. “It helped me feel like I was taking back some control. And I think it sort of allowed me to come in from a different doorway.”

She added that although she sometimes muses on her past decisions, admitting, “There’s certainly things like, ‘I wish I’d done that’,” she is now able to “step back and go, ‘That was the right person for that.’”

McAdams said that while she did feel “guilty for not capitalising on the opportunity that I was being given” back in the 00s, she also recognised that the pressure at the time “wasn’t quite jiving with my personality and what I needed to stay sane” – so she chose to prioritise her mental health.

“There were definitely some anxious moments of wondering if I was just throwing it all away, and why I was doing that? It’s taken years to understand what I intuitively was doing,” she added.

At a time when hustle culture is glorified and working more than necessary is still often presented as a badge of honour, it’s refreshing to hear McAdams speaking out about the value of stepping back and having firm boundaries in place. Sure, not all of us have her Hollywood salary, but it’s a sentiment that can be brought into our working lives, whether it’s knowing when to say ‘no’ to that extra (unpaid) responsibility you’ve been landed with (a phenomenon also known as ‘quiet promotion’) or even taking a career break.

And that two-year gap on her CV doesn’t exactly seem to have harmed McAdams’s career. She went on to star in films including About Time, Disobedience and Spotlight, which earned her an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress.

Up next, she’ll star in the adaptation of Judy Blume’s Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret, and while she’s continued to be selective about the roles she picks, it just makes it even more of a joy when we do see her appear on screen. 

Images: Getty