Watch Britney Spears Tearfully Audition for ‘The Notebook’ | Vanity Fair

By Savannah Walsh

Although it’s difficult to imagine anyone other than Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams as the star-crossed Southern lovers of 2004’s The Notebook, Britney Spears makes the case for her spin on the character of Allie in a newly surfaced audition for the film.

Last week, in an excerpt from her new memoir, The Woman in Me, out on October 24, Spears confirmed that she auditioned for The Notebook’s lead and was one of the final two contenders for the part. “The Notebook casting came down to me and Rachel McAdams, and even though it would have been fun to reconnect with Ryan Gosling after our time on the Mickey Mouse Club, I’m glad I didn’t do it,” Spears writes in an excerpt from the book published by People. “If I had, instead of working on my album In the Zone I’d have been acting like a 1940s heiress day and night.”

The world can now watch Spears’s take on the role, thanks to the Daily Mail, which published her audition tape on Monday. In the two-minute clip, Spears grows emotional as she delivers a monologue about choosing to marry Lon Hammond (played by James Marsden), the man she meets and gets engaged to while estranged from Noah. At one point, Gosling’s voice can be heard off-camera, but it’s Spears who is doing all of the heavy lifting.

Until now, Spears’s audition had been spoken about, but never seen. “We met with a lot of actresses, and they were all very good,” Gosling told ET in 2004, adding of Spears, “She did a really nice job.” Said McAdams, “I’m sure Britney would have done a great job! I’m sure it would have been a totally different movie, but yeah, I just heard that the other day. I had no idea! I was very fortunate. I was sort of at the end of the line, and I know they’d sort of done a cross-country trip—Nick and Ryan together—looking for the girl, and I am glad I just kind of squeaked in there.” In 2021, an alleged tape of Spears auditioning for the role opposite Gosling was reportedly listed on eBay at a starting bid of $1 million.

In her book, Spears cited 2002’s Crossroads, her first and only foray on the big screen, as an immersive process. “The experience wasn’t easy for me,” she writes. “My problem wasn’t with anyone involved in the production but with what acting did to my mind. I think I started Method acting—only I didn’t know how to break out of my character. I really became this other person. Some people do Method acting, but they’re usually aware of the fact that they’re doing it. But I didn’t have any separation at all.”

Crossroads director Tamra Davis spoke to Vanity Fair ahead of the film’s return to theaters this week and praised Spears’s commitment to her role of Lucy. “I wanted to get the authentic version of her. And so when I rewatched it in the last couple weeks, I was so moved because I knew that’s what I was doing,” she said. “But it was really intense when she’s sitting on the bed talking to her father about how she missed out on being a teenager. That’s her crying, telling us that longing that she missed out on everything. That’s really her. When she’s crying on the bathroom floor of that rejection [by her mother], we had to get to her, really her. She’s not acting in the movie. So it’s so curious to hear that she saw that too, that I was really making her feel and be that character. Because she couldn’t be Britney.”

In her book, Spears writes that losing the part “was pretty much the beginning and end of my acting career, and I was relieved.” She concluded that the medium just wasn’t for her. “I hope I never get close to that occupational hazard again,” Spears writes. “Living that way, being half yourself and half a fictional character, is messed up. After a while you don’t know what’s real anymore.”