Rachel McAdams Admits She’d ‘Last an Hour’ in the Wilderness but Has a Doctor Strange Life-Saving Skill (Exclusive)

Rachel McAdams wouldn’t nominate herself to save the day on a deserted island, but she’s got some secret skills.

“I have fantasies of being a survivalist. Even as a kid, I would always like, ‘What if I got dropped off in the woods and then I couldn’t find my way back, how would I survive?’ So I always liked to spend time in that fantasy, but in actuality I would last an hour,” McAdams tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue, on stands everywhere Friday.

Still, don’t count the mom of two out as she faces the elements in the new psychological thriller Send Help (in theaters Friday). “I do think I’m pretty adaptable,” says McAdams, 47, who was recently honored with a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. 

“I think the life of an actor has made me kind of hearty,” she adds. “I can kind of just pack a suitcase in 20 minutes and go somewhere I’ve never been before and just find my way. I really do like an adventure.”

Her Send Help character Linda Liddle gets that and more in director Sam Raimi’s twisty dark new tale. The film has the Mean Girls alum playing a timid, undervalued employee who “never gets a shot at showing what she’s worth,” McAdams says, until Linda becomes stranded on a deserted island with her incorrigible nepo boss (Dylan O’Brien) after their plane crashes.

“I’ve never quite done this genre,” says McAdams of the vicious survival tale that reunited her with Raimi, who last directed the Oscar-nominated actress in 2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. “I also feel like I got just a taste of him in Doctor Strange because I was playing a more supporting character. So, I was just really excited to dive into something like this with him that was such a big challenge, such a juicy character.”

Arriving with a fresh 90% Rotten Tomatoes rating, the unpredictable film marks a bold turn for McAdams, who broke out with the one-two punch of 2004’s Mean Girls and The Notebook. But the Ontario native has also never shied away from playing leads or “yummy supporting characters” in movies from superhero sagas to prestige dramas (she earned an Oscar nod for 2015’s Spotlight).

“I feel really lucky to still be here,” she says. “I’m still pinching myself.”

And there is one skill from her resume she has at the ready should real disaster strike. “I did get to learn how to do stitches” for Doctor Strange, she says. “It became like knitting.”