‘This Is My Body’: Rachel McAdams Poses for Photos with Her Armpit Hair Showing

Rachel McAdams is getting super real.

The 44-year-old actress, who stars in the upcoming highly anticipated movie Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, based on the best-selling Judy Blume book of the same name, opened up to Bustle about the importance of sharing her real body.

In the interview, McAdams recalled one of her last photo shoots, to promote the 2017 film, Disobedience. For the Girls. Girls. Girls. magazine shoot, she posed in Versace and Bulgari — and a breast pump. “I love that juxtaposition of beauty, glam, fantasy, and then truth,” she told Bustle about the photo, taken just six months postpartum and while she was still breastfeeding.

The Wedding Crashers actress also requested the Bustle images accompanying this interview be edited as minimally as possible, including keeping her underarm hair front and center.

“With this shoot, I’m wearing latex underwear,” she said, referring to the Bustle shoot. “But I’ve had two children. This is my body, and I think that’s so important to reflect back out to the world,” she said.

“It’s OK to look your best and work at it and be healthy, but that’s different for everyone,” McAdams added.

In the interview, McAdams also reminisced on missed film opportunities and her recent two-year break from acting.

As for her time away from acting, McAdams got candid. Of what ultimately became a two-year break, McAdams said, “I felt guilty for not capitalizing on the opportunity that I was being given, because I knew I was in such a lucky spot. But I also knew it wasn’t quite jiving with my personality and what I needed to stay sane.”

“There were definitely some anxious moments of wondering if I was just throwing it all away, and why was I doing that?” she added. “It’s taken years to understand what I intuitively was doing.”

McAdams also recently opened up about how being a mom helped her prep for her latest role. Speaking to PEOPLE at the Los Angeles premiere of Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, the actress opened up about how her being a parent has helped her play the mother of the title character from Blume’s classic novel.

“She’s such a great mom. She’s imperfect, but that makes her perfect,” McAdams told PEOPLE of her role as Barbara Simon opposite Abby Ryder Fortson, who plays the 11-year-old lead. Kathy Bates also stars as Margaret’s grandmother Sylvia.

“As a mom, it’s not too, too hard to find the messiness, the privilege of getting to watch a child grow up and be their parent,” added McAdams, who has a son and daughter with partner Jamie Linden.

“I think that’s a really lucky place, a spot to be in, and I think Barb feels that,” she said about the movie, which centers on the changing life of Margaret Simon after her family moves from New York City to the New Jersey suburbs — while also “going through the messy and tumultuous throes of puberty with new friends in a new school,” according to a synopsis.

Lionsgate released a trailer for the film in January, which showed Margaret and her peers learning about puberty, purchasing bras and feminine hygiene products for the first time, experiencing their first kisses, and daydreaming about life at 19, with a montage of clips set to George Harrison’s iconic 1970 song “What Is Life.”

“I think she’s still getting over having parents that didn’t support her. So she wants to be incredibly supportive of her daughter, almost to a fault,” McAdams told PEOPLE about her character.