After only a handful of movie and TV roles, Rachel McAdams made a splash as Regina George, the catty teen villain in the 2004 comedy Mean Girls (starring Lindsay Lohan). A graduate of York University (just outside Toronto), McAdams began her onscreen career in 2000. Mean Girls was the best and last of a string of roles in which McAdams played teen girls; her impressive dramatic turn as Ryan Gosling's lover in The Notebook (2004, starring James Garner) caused her to be hailed as an up-and-comer. By the end of 2005 she had indeed arrived, starring in three high profile movies: Red Eye (with Cillian Murphy), The Wedding Crashers (with Owen Wilson) and The Family Stone (with Sarah Jessica Parker).

Extra credit: McAdams has been romantically linked to Ryan Gosling, her co-star in The Notebook; coincidentally, the two were born in the same hospital.