Rachel Anne McAdams

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."
McAdams' first film of 2011, Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, opened the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and saw her reunite with Wedding Crashers' Owen Wilson. Allen wrote the part of Inez for her on the recommendation of her former co-star Diane Keaton. It has become Allen's top grossing picture ever in North America and was lauded by critics. However, there were mixed reactions to McAdams' shrewish character. The Guardian bemoaned that she "has morphed from the sweet thing in Wedding Crashers to the dream-crushing bitch that, according to American comedies, women become once they ensnare their man". Richard Corliss of TIME was equally disappointed: "Allen pours an immense amount of odium on Inez.. I felt sorry for McAdams, whose usually winning presence is ground into hostile chiché." However, The Los Angeles Times felt she "deftly handles a part that is less amiable than usual for her" and The New York Times found her "superbly speeded-up".