Rachel McAdams Goes "Platinum"

No, gorgeous actress Rachel McAdams is not morphing into a musical artist. She went very, very platinum blonde for her new mystery/romance/dark comedy Married Life. Rachel has been off our radar for a little while after playing the gal we loved to hate in Mean Girls, breaking our hearts in The Notebook and taking us on a sky high thrill ride in Red Eye. In Married Life, Rachel plays a hot young widow who has lost her handsome husband in WWII. Now, she is pursued by hot older men Chris Cooper and Pierce Brosnan; two totally opposite types in the film.

Regrouping has done the actress a lot of good and she's back with a vengeance in several upcoming projects. We were happy to see her again at the 4 Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills where we chatted about her new film, her blonde bombshell look (she's back to her pretty light brown in real life) and what's coming up for this far from "mean girl". Picture Rachel in slinky black dress, a gray sweater and high black heels with a cute lace-up feature. She explained that the gray sweater was due to a see-through problem with the dress for her earlier TV interviews. Yikes.

TeenHollywood: Welcome back to the press interview scene.

Rachel: It's good to be back. I missed you guys.

TeenHollywood: What did that platinum hair dye job do to your hair?

Rachel: [laughs]. Maybe we shouldn't talk about that. It's intense. It was a really fun color. It was fun to be platinum. I think we forget, because so many photographs are in black and white, that women [of the late 1940's and 1950's] were very risque and, at the time, it was very usual to be that blonde.

TeenHollywood: Did you use some pale make-up too?

Rachel: Yeah, very, very light. I don't go out in the sun that much but that was definitely even light for me. But, I liked the idea that she was on the verge of slipping away, of letting herself just disappear, a little bit ghostly and then Pierce sort of brings the color back for her and her world gets revved up again.

TeenHollywood: After Mean Girls, you went to The Notebook. Did you make a conscious decision not to take more teen or young college girl roles?

Rachel: Nobody believes me as a 16-year-old anymore. I was 25 playing 16 and they're like 'forget it, honey. It's over' [laughs.. so not true. She looks very young]. I think that Mean Girls stood out to me to be a very smart satire on teenage life which I was excited to be a part of because it's what is happening in that world and there's some real growth. I would not be opposed to going back there, not to 16 but back to that genre. I think it's a really smart way of telling those stories.

TeenHollywood: Your director Ira Sachs has said that not many actresses could walk into a room and light it up so much that two men fall helplessly in love with her... but you can.

Rachel: [she covers her face with a hand and.. is she blushing?] Well, I felt very strange and he's like 'you look beautiful'. 'I feel weird'. 'Just trust me, go with it'. I'm glad I did [laughs].

TeenHollywood: Did you base the character on anyone; an actress from the '40's?

Rachel: I didn't. I just watched as much as I could and tried to get the flavor down and hope that it would go in by osmosis and then I'd reinterpret it in my own way. Her emotional life was what I was most excited about and I hoped that the physical life would stand up and would be there but I didn't base it on anyone.

TeenHollywood: You took a long break from projects now you have a lot coming up. What's that experience been like for you; movies back to back to back?

Rachel: Right. It's been really good, actually. I've had a little bit of time off to sort of regroup but, after having taken a year off, I found that I was so ready and I have to say I was very inspired after I did Married Life. Working with Ira, I had such a great experience. I was inspired to keep going. It was so positive and it gave me energy rather than depleting me. Some films can be very depleting, which is also good. It means you're giving a lot of yourself but this one really filled me up and prepared me for more.

TeenHollywood: Why was taking a break so important when there was such momentum in your career? That can be a risky time to take a break.

Rachel: Yeah, it can be. I guess I just had to trust that it would all work out? It was the right thing for me to do at the time. There was just no other way to go about it so I hoped for the best and just took my time. I had just been working quite literally, back to back without any breaks in between and just wanted to just relax and have a life. You really don't have a life when you're working. I always think 'oh, I'm gonna see everybody on my days off. I'm gonna read so many books and see so many films' and then three months go by.

TeenHollywood: Your character rides a line between romance and dark comedy. Where is she really at...romantically?

Rachel: I think, in terms of the romance, Kay has already loved and lost the love of her life so she's really in love for the second time around. I think, I haven't had that experience personally, but it's very different from her first love so that was kind of interesting to me; what kind of love is she looking for? Was it more like Harry [Chris Cooper] or more like Richard [Pierce Brosnan]? We talked about what her desires are; her desires as an individual separate from love. This isn't all about who loves who and how.

TeenHollywood: I really enjoyed the novel "The Time Traveler's Wife." Now you are going to play her in a film. What's your take on that character?

Rachel: She's really a lady in waiting, often. It was frustrating in that way. She knows what she wants but she can't have it. She has it but it's so fleeting. It's always just slipping out of her fingers. To have that kind of confidence in love at such a young age, yet it's always slipping through the cracks.. for me, as an actor, it was a really frustrating dilemma.

TeenHollywood: Cute Eric Bana plays the time traveling husband. How much do you actually get to work with him if he's disappearing all the time?

Rachel: [laughs] Right. Quite a bit. A lot of the effects will be done in post so we were working really a lot.

TeenHollywood: The book was hard to keep track of so I can imagine, as an actor, you were going 'now when is this and where'?

Rachel: But what's interesting is almost all films are like that. They jump around out of order and you're constantly wondering 'what's happened? What year is it? Who am I now? What's the moment before? What's the moment ahead?' So, I'd had a lot of practice, actually, before going into it.

TeenHollywood: You are also in State of Play with a great cast. Brad Pitt dropped out, then you land Russell Crowe.

Rachel: [smiling] I know. I know! It was a good scenario either way for me, anyway. It's been great. I was sad that I don't get to work with Brad Pitt but I'm having a hell of a time working with Russell Crowe. He's great. He's awesome.

TeenHollywood: Can you talk about your character in State of Play?

Rachel: Yeah. I play a political reporter of the younger generation. She's a star blogger and then Russell plays the more old-school, get out on the street and find the story yourself and make sure it's the truth and he's kind of mentoring me. But, that's sort of the peripheral story around a murder. More murder involved in that one.

TeenHollywood: Sounds great. Rachel, are you wearing any particular designer today or is it just your own stuff?

Rachel: You know, I had a little fashion hitch so I'm wearing my own sweater over the dress I will not reveal to you [she wiggles her eyebrows and laughs].

TeenHollywood: Are you going to take another break after State of Play?

Rachel: Yeah. I'm consistent.

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Lynn Barker is a Hollywood-based entertainment journalist and produced screenwriter.