Actress Rachel McAdams is going for ‘Glory’

Still in her first decade of getting paid for acting, Rachel McAdams, 31, has smoothly covered a wide spectrum of different characters and types. She’s gone romantic (“The Notebook,” “The Time Traveler’s Wife”), played the victim of a psychopath (“Red Eye”), done straight drama (“The Lucky Ones”), dabbled in slick action (“Sherlock Holmes”), and shown that she has a penchant for long and loud screaming (“Mean Girls”).

Now she’s getting a chance to show her comic chops. And not just with clever dialogue. McAdams proves that she also knows her way around sight gags in “Morning Glory,” a contemporary tale of the morning TV talk show business.

She stars as an up-and-coming executive producer who tackles the job of getting a below-par chat program out of the ratings basement.

Yet when director Roger Michell (“Notting Hill”) first wooed her for the part, she wasn’t all that interested.

“I tried to talk Roger out of it a few times, and thankfully he didn’t listen to me,” said the radiant McAdams at a press conference this week in New York. “I was very nervous about playing this character and taking on this part. But we talked about it, and he put my fears at bay.”

Michell remembers an earlier conversation with her.

“She confessed to me that she didn’t feel she was a comedic actress,” he said. “She was worried that she wasn’t funny. But on the very first day that we started rehearsing she revealed that she’s a gifted physical comedienne.”

“What Roger did for me, which was so great, is he got me out of my head and into my body,” said McAdams, who grew up in Canada playing sports. “It’s a testament to him that he figured that out. He said, ‘Just run around, wave your arms, and something will happen.’ I’m so grateful to him for that.”

To prepare for the part of Becky Fuller, the energetic, workaholic go-getter with no time for a personal life, McAdams said yes to invites to check out the control rooms of “Good Morning America” and “The Today Show.”

“I wound up shadowing some executive producers there, and I realized it’s easier to be an actress than an executive producer on a morning television show,” she said.

Becky is first seen toiling away on a small local program, but loses that job and turns on the verve and perkiness and smarts to move her way up to a gig in New York City, on the entertainingly dysfunctional “Daybreak.”

Her first decision is to fire half of the male-female morning team, then find another guy to join the lively Colleen (Diane Keaton) at the desk.

Her mistake is to hire the once-respected, now-disgraced news anchor Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford), who hates the job and his new on-air partner in equal measure.

“When I was researching, I was disappointed to learn that executive producers are much more organized than Becky,” she said, laughing, “and much more together as people. So that wasn’t quite in keeping with the reality. She’s a little more frenetic than they would be, but I liked the juxtaposition of that. I liked that she was trying to hold together a show that was falling apart, and she was falling apart, too.”

Since the film is a romantic comedy, there’s never much doubt that Becky is going to do well. McAdams even admitted to identifying with her character’s success.

“I definitely could relate to Becky in terms of feeling like you get your foot in the door and you think that it’s your only shot to stay there,” she said. “I definitely felt that way with my first job. It was like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders, and I have to make this work or I’m never gonna get another chance. ... And it’s probably a good thing you do look at it that way because you rise to the occasion.”