Rachel McAdams turned down five box-office hits during her two-year hiatus

Canadian star took a break from acting between 2006 and 2008

Rachel McAdams has revealed the astonishing slew of hit movies she turned down while on a two-year hiatus in the 2000s.

In 2006, McAdams was being hailed as “the next Julia Roberts” after breaking out in beloved films such as Mean Girls and The Notebook.

However, after refusing to appear nude for a Vanity Fair cover shoot alongside Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley that year, McAdams flew home to Canada.

She “spent her time biking around Toronto, spending time with her family, and recentering,” according to a new interview with Bustle.

According to the magazine, McAdams turned down five major films while “recentering” between 2006 and 2008:The Devil Wears Prada, Casino Royale, Mission: Impossible III, Iron Man, and Get Smart.

“There’s certainly things like ‘I wish I’d done that,’” McAdams said. “[But] I step back and go, ‘That was the right person for that.’”

Rachel McAdams (Greg Doherty/Getty Images)

All five films went on to be box office smashes, earning a combined total of approximately $2.15bn (£1.74bn).

Of her two-year break from Hollywood, the actor said: “I felt guilty for not capitalising on the opportunity that I was being given, because I knew I was in such a lucky spot. But I also knew it wasn’t quite jiving with my personality and what I needed to stay sane.

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

McAdams has previously stated that she “never really wanted to be a big movie star”.

The Devil Wears Prada director recently confirmed that McAdams turned down the lead role of Andrea Sachs three times before it was offered to Hathaway.

“The studio was determined to have her, and she was determined not to do it,” Frankel said.

Elsewhere in her cover issue for Bustle, McAdams was praised for showing off her armpit hair during a minimally edited photo shoot.

She next stars in the film adaptation of the 1970 novel Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, which is out 28 April in US cinemas.