Spotlight

Jane Mclean’s net worth

Jane McLean admits she’s sensitive, so she knew what she was doing was wrong. She did it anyway. “I couldn’t stay away, I was so curious,” the Toronto-raised actor admits over the phone from her L.A. home.

She hit the internet to find out what people thought of her playing Rachel McAdams’ best friend Charisse in The Time Traveler’s Wife.

Based on the Audrey Niffenegger novel, the romantic thriller follows a man (Eric Bana) with a genetic disorder that causes him to involuntarily travel through time, colliding with his lover (McAdams) at different points in her life. The only other people who know about his condition are Charisse and her boyfriend Gomez (Ron Livingston).

“It’s based on an international best-selling book and has a huge following, so before we even started shooting — I never do this, but I did with this, and I’ll never do it again — there were a bunch of blogs out there, and there were a lot of opinions going around about how I was going to play the character.” For instance? “Was I going to get plumped for it?”

McLean, who was born in the Philippines but raised in Toronto, is a slight wisp of a woman. But Charisse, as she’s described in the book, is a little round madonna, an earth mother.

“And then others would say, ‘Well, she looks kind of mean.’ Or ‘I remember seeing her as Ancient Mai in The Dresden Files, and she was a really harsh character,’” continues McLean. “And I’m like, ‘I’m an actor for goodness sakes!’”

So, was McLean tempted to alter her performance based on what she’d read? “For a minute,” she concedes, but insists those few pounds she did gain before filming had nothing to do with the blogs. “I used [the role] as a bit of an excuse; I love eating.”