Recently, in the course of one brief interview with Rachel McAdams, the actress offered to hug me - twice. Honestly. I’d like to think it’s because I’m an irresistibly huggable guy, but the more likely answer is that McAdams just has hugging on the brain these days thanks to a starring role in “Married Life,” a new drama where she plays a comforting damsel to not one, but two, co-dependent charmers, played by Chris Cooper and Pierce Brosnan.

You can’t fake a hug. As for everything else, well, that’s a different story, laughed McAdams.

“I think you have to put on a certain persona for the person you love sometimes. Sometimes you have to be the strong one in the relationship and sometimes you get to fall apart,” she said. “You’re always kind of playing a role.”

It’s exactly this sort of duplicity that gets everyone in “Married Life” in so much trouble. Cooper is married to Patricia Clarkson and cheating on her with McAdams. McAdams is carrying on a simultaneous affair with Brosnan, who is Cooper’s best friend. And somewhere in there, deciding he can’t leave his wife, Cooper decides instead to kill her.

As Brosnan says in the film, “You can never really know the mind of the person you sleep next to.” And, “thank God for that,” thinks McAdams.

“In the right relationship I think it can be what keeps it exciting and magical – it’s not in this [movie] but yeah I think that it’s really good to have private lives and really good to have individual experiences,” she said. “And then come together and share them.”

So what’s the best way to avoid her character’s fate, and instead sustain a long-term relationship?

“I’m not good at giving relationship advice. I wouldn’t want to do that,” McAdams teased. “I wouldn’t want to screw anything up!”

Well, you can’t go wrong with hugs.

“Married Life” opens today in limited release.