Rachel Anne McAdams

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."
• 2010 onwards
2010's Morning Glory, a comedy about a television producer's attempt to improve the ratings of an ailing morning television program, was billed as a starring vehicle for the actress but was only a modest commercial success. McAdams' performance was widely praised. Kenneth Turan of The Los Angeles Times said she "gives the kind of performance we go to the movies for". Roger Ebert felt she played "as lovable a lead as anyone since Amy Adams in Junebug" in an otherwise "routine" movie. The New York Post was impressed by "her gift for physical comedy" while Variety was won over by a "flustery physicality that is delightful to watch". While The New York Times felt she "plays her role exceptionally well" and is "effortlessly likable", it called on Hollywood to give her parts "worthy" of her talent. "Ms. McAdams has to rely on her dimples to get by. She does, but she could do better."