Rachel Anne McAdams

• Return to prominence
She starred in three films in 2009. The first was well-reviewed political thriller State of Play with Ben Affleck, Helen Mirren, Jason Bateman and Russell Crowe. Entertainment Weekly felt she was "perfectly cast as an ambitious wonkette" while The New York Times noted that "there is some fun to be had in watching (Crowe and McAdams) lock horns..and engage in fine snappy banter."
Her second 2009 project was The Time Traveler's Wife, an adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger's bestselling novel. It was a financial success but the critical response was muted. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone said, "I'd watch the vibrant Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana in anything, but The Time Traveler's Wife is pushing it." The Los Angeles Times found her "luminous (yet), sadly, her facility as an actress is mostly wasted." Writing in The Chicago Tribune, Michael Phillips, in an otherwise tepid review, said of her performance: “Every scene she’s in, even the silly ones, becomes better — truer, often against long odds — because she’s in it. Her work feels emotionally spontaneous yet technically precise. She has an unusually easy touch with both comedy and drama, and she never holds a melodramatic moment hostage.”
Sherlock Holmes was her final movie of the year and it stands as her highest-grossing to date. She played Irene Adler, a love interest for Robert Downey, Jr.'s Sherlock. While the movie won generally favourable reviews, critics were left unimpressed with her performance. Variety felt her character was "not very well integrated into the rest of the story, a shortcoming the normally resourceful McAdams is unable to do much about". The New York Times stated, "Ms. McAdams is a perfectly charming actress and performs gamely as the third wheel of this action-bromance tricycle. But Irene feels in this movie more like a somewhat cynical commercial contrivance. She offers a little something for the ladies and also something for the lads, who, much as they may dig fights and explosions and guns and chases, also like girls."