Rachel McAdams has been one of those actresses over the years who has proven her worth with a varied filmography that showcases her comedic and dramatic chops in equal measure. This weekend, she returns to the big screen in Sam Raimi’s dark comedy survival thriller, Send Help, opposite Dylan O’Brien. Reviews for McAdams have been glowing for her portrayal of Linda Liddle, a woman mistreated by a sexist boss who turns the tables on her employer when they end up on a deserted island following their plane going down on the way to Bangkok.

As an actress, McAdams is no stranger to raves, having been nominated for an Academy Award and Tony Award, and yet, something about her still feels underrated within the industry. As she prepares to show moviegoers once again why she’s a force to be reckoned with, it feels like the right time to dive into her five best performances ever ahead of her turn in Raimi’s latest.

Honorable Mention: Amy Stone in The Family Stone (2005)

In the years since its release, The Family Stone has earned its place as a Christmas favorite many love or as one of the most polarizing holiday efforts, but what can’t be denied either way is McAdams’ performance as Amy Stone, the outspoken and sarcastic youngest sibling of the Stone family. Written and directed by Thomas Bezucha, The Family Stone follows the Stone family as the eldest son, Everett (Dermot Mulroney), brings his uptight girlfriend Meredith (Sarah Jessica Parker) home for the holidays with the intention of proposing to his lady love with a cherished heirloom ring.

However, things don’t run smoothly, and Meredith is met with a hostile reception, particularly from his mother, Sybil (Diane Keaton), and his younger sister, Amy (McAdams). To help with her case, Meredith invites her younger sister Julie (Claire Danes) for support, but it only proves to complicate matters along the way. With an ensemble cast that also includes Craig T. Nelson and Luke Wilson, McAdams stands out as the sardonic Amy, who is full of piss and vinegar for Meredith. The film showcases her comedic skills, both through physical comedy and line delivery, as she has a realistic rapport with the other cast members portraying her family. She feels like she’s legitimately the little sister of the bunch, and she slips into the role effortlessly.

Despite the film mostly playing as a comedy, it has a few serious moments, and one of them allows McAdams to shine following Meredith’s unveiling of a Christmas gift for Everett that has a closer connection to Amy. It’s a small moment, but proof that McAdams shines bright in both comedy and drama.

5. Lisa Reisert in Red Eye (2005)

2005 was a big year for McAdams with high-profile releases that solidifed how rising star status, but the actress proved she has more than what it took to carry a film mostly on her own with the psychological thriller, Red Eye, opposite Cillian Murphy. Directed by Wes Craven from a screenplay by Carl Ellsworth with story credit from Ellsworth and Dan Foos, Red Eye follows Lisa Reisert, a hotel manager who finds herself involved in an assassination plot when she’s seated next to a terrorist (Murphy) on a red-eye flight to Miami.

Red Eye has one of those plots that lives and dies on its creative hook and the need of the audience to suspend a lot of disbelief, but McAdams grounds the film with a believable and well-rounded performance. She’s likable at the start as she’s unknowingly pulled into an impossible situation, and she’s utterly convincing when she has to display unwavering silent fear as she can’t let those around her know what’s going on because the consequences will be dire. Her interactions with Murphy are palpable during this 85-minute game of cat and mouse, but it’s the evolution of her character during this short time that makes this one of her finest performances.

Once she figures out a way to turn the tables on her captor, McAdams dives headfirst into action and survival mode, showcasing that she can rough and tumble with the best of them. Not only is Red Eye a well-crafted thriller, but it was an early showing that McAdams had what it took to be a leading lady in a film that required her to be more than a damsel in distress.

4. Allie Hamilton in The Notebook (2004)

If 2005 was a big year for McAdams, 2004 was the year that she broke out with two films and roles that would go on to become iconic. One of them is her turn as Allison “Allie” Hamilton in The Notebook, where many moviegoers likely fell in love with McAdams as an actress. Directed by Nick Cassavetes from a screenplay by Jeremy Leven and Jan Sardi, The Notebook is based on the 1996 Nicholas Sparks novel of the same name and follows a young couple who fall in love in the 1940s.

Their love story unfolds in the present day as it’s read in a notebook by an elderly man named Duke (James Garner) to a nursing home resident (Gena Rowlands). You would have to have a heart of stone not to fall in love with the charms of The Notebook, which has refreshing old-school sensibilities as the love story unfolds. From a straightforward standpoint, the love story of Noah Calhoun (Ryan Gosling) and Allie (McAdams) already works due to the natural chemistry of the performers (who reportedly didn’t get along well during filming but later dated in real life).

Like any good romance that tugs at the heartstrings, the film puts these opposites together (he’s poor, she’s rich), separates them to give us a good cry, and allows them to find their way back to each other. It could all be overwrought and a bit cheesy, but McAdams and Gosling pull you into their story and make you root for them, their obstacles be damned. McAdams is quite good here and conveys the conflicting emotions of whether or not she should follow her head or heart. Once you think the tears will stop flowing, the movie throws you another curveball by revealing Duke is, in fact, Noah, and the nursing home patient he’s reading to is Allie, who is now afflicted with dementia.

Throw in the fact that the notebook is actually her journal that details their love story, so she’ll remember him, and Noah maintained his promise to read to her daily, nothing can help you recover from the puddle of mess you’re in once the movie is over. With a single performance and palpable chemistry, McAdams can easily say she’s in one of the defining romance movies of the last twenty years.

3. Annie Davis in Game Night (2018)

McAdams proved once again that she’s a comedic natural in the dark comedy action film, Game Night, a movie that plays to her strengths as a comedic performer in a solid pairing with Jason Bateman. Directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein from a screenplay by Mark Perez, Game Night follows a group of friends whose typical game night becomes anything but when one of them is kidnapped. McAdams had a string of more dramatic roles before diving back into comedy with Game Night, and what a return to the genre it was for the actress.

Along with Bateman, she holds her own alongside a fun ensemble cast that includes Billy Magnussen, Lamorne Morris, Kylie Bunbury, Jesse Plemons, Michael C. Hall, Sharon Horgan, and Kyle Chandler. The great skill she possesses in Game Night is that she’s fully aware not to take any of this all that seriously as the plot becomes more hilariously absurd, and yet she also brings heart to the role and manages to ground the silliness around her.

From doing a Honey Bunny from Pulp Fiction impression to one of the best comedic deliveries in recent memory (“Oh, no, he died!), McAdams is in top comedic form here. It might be a bit goofy and over the top, but she finds the right balance to make it work and proves that her comedic chops more than deliver when called upon.

2. Sacha Pfeiffer in Spotlight (2015)

Sometimes a performance displaying quiet restraint can be the most powerful, and that’s what McAdams delivers in the biographical drama, Spotlight. Directed by Tom McCarthy from a screenplay he co-wrote with Josh Singer, Spotlight showcases the Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” team, a unit of investigative journalists who dove into a cover-up of child sex abuse by priests belonging to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. McAdams portrays Sacha Pfeiffer in the film, one of the journalists on the team who gets to have one of the film’s strongest moments.

The role is a prime example that not all performances need to be showy. Sometimes it’s about listening and conveying emotions without really saying a word. McAdams masters that in Spotlight with a nuanced performance that shows her compassion and sympathy as she listens to survivors of abuse. She doesn’t get any big monologues or what anyone perceives as a big “Oscar moment,” but it’s when she comes face-to-face with a priest and pedophile for an interview, and he matter-of-factly admits to molesting them, but not feeling gratified sexually, and admitting he was raped himself, that proves to be her best moment.

Through micro-expressions, McAdams conveys all the necessary emotions as she takes in the information. She’s portraying a journalist hunting down facts and having to hear some uneasy truths, effectively shown as it becomes hard for her character to attend church with her grandmother. McAdams earned a deserved Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress here, and it’s an important one because performances without huge emotional outbursts deserve recognition too. Alongside an ensemble that also includes Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci, Liev Schreiber, Billy Crudup, and Brian D’Arcy, McAdams proved that no performance is too small to be noticed.

1. Regina George in Mean Girls (2004)

It wasn’t enough for McAdams to appear in the defining romance of the 2000s, but she also had to appear in the defining teen film of the era when she brought Regina George to life in 2004’s Mean Girls. Directed by Mark Waters from a screenplay by Tina Fey, Mean Girls is inspired by Rosalind Wiseman’s 2002 self-help book Queen Bees and Wannabes and follows a naive teenager named Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan), who transfers to a public school in America after being homeschooled in Africa. Cady becomes fast friends with outcasts Janis (Lizzy Caplan) and Damian (Daniel Franzese), and soon they form a plan to bring down Regina George (McAdams) and “the Plastics,” a clique of girls that rule the school with a pink fist. While Mean Girls was clearly a vehicle for Lohan, McAdams steals all her scenes as Regina George, displaying crazy good comedic chops as she effortlessly delivers Fey’s pitch-perfect and quotable dialogue.

The great thing about her performance is that Regina George could easily be a caricature, but McAdams somehow rises above all of that to portray a fully formed character. She might be mean and ready to cut down those beneath her with a pointed remark, but McAdams is able to not make her a one-note villain. Alongside her fellow Plastics, portrayed by Amanda Seyfried and Lacey Chabert, McAdams gives audiences a character for the ages that continues to be iconic. There’s a reason that Mean Girls still resonates, and while there is a perfect storm of factors that make this film a classic, McAdams is clearly a huge part of that.

Send Help is now playing in theaters nationwide.

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