16 Surprising Stars Who Almost Played Noah and Allie in 'The Notebook'

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3 days ago

Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling starred in the beloved 2004 movie The Notebook
Several other stars — including Britney Spears — were up for the role of Allie
Meanwhile, Gosling was a beloved choice early on in the processThe Notebook became an instant classic when it premiered in 2004.
Although Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling ultimately played beloved love interests Allison "Allie" Hamilton and Noah Calhoun, there were several other stars who almost snagged the roles during the 2002 audition process. Director Nick Cassavetes and casting director Matthew Barry chose Gosling earlier on in the process, while it took longer to scour the country for who would play Allie.
"[Gosling was] weird enough in a certain respect that you would believe that he would know that he could take one look at somebody and know that that was the person for them," Cassavetes said in an interview.
After meeting with dozens of actresses, the directors tested out 10 different women with Gosling for a chemistry read.
"Everybody who was anybody that year wanted this part," Barry told the Daily Mail in 2023.
The search later dwindled down to McAdams and Britney Spears, but they ultimately went with McAdams — who was relatively unknown at the time — because of her chemistry with Gosling.
"When Miss McAdams came in and read, it was apparent that she was the one," Cassavetes said in the same video.
So, who were the other actors and actresses who auditioned for The Notebook? Here's everything to know about the stars who didn't become Noah and Allie.
The role of Allie ultimately came down to either Spears or McAdams.
"At the height of her career she was like, 'I want to be really prepared for this,' " Barry recalled to E! News in 2021. "So I said, 'OK, come work with me and my partner.' And she came in eight hours, two days in a row and worked with us. She was fantastic."
Barry later told the Daily Mail that Spears' audition "blew away" him and the other producers.
"Britney wasn't just good — she was phenomenal," he told the outlet. "It was a tough decision. Britney blew us all away. Our jaws were on the floor. I was blown away. Absolutely blown away. She brought her A-game that day."
However, Barry told E! News that Cassavetes had some hesitations over casting Spears while she was soaring in fame (she had just acted in the 2002 film Crossroads). Although they went with McAdams for the role, Spears later addressed the rejection and said it was for the best.
"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. If I had, instead of working on my album In the Zone, I'd have been acting like a 1940s heiress day and night," she wrote in her 2023 memoir, The Woman In Me. "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."
Spears ended up acting in a few more movies — Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002), Pauly Shore Is Dead (2003) and Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) — but she prioritized her music and released albums In the Zone (2003) and Blackout (2007).
Casting director Barry told E! News that Reese Witherspoon was initially thought of as a potential candidate for Allie.
However, before she auditioned for the role, Barry and the rest of the team "realized she was too old for the role." At the time of the movie in 2004, Allie and Noah were both supposed to be 17, while Witherspoon was 28.
Of course, not getting The Notebook was far from detrimental, as Witherspoon became a leading romantic comedy actress and starred in Legally Blonde, Sweet Home Alabama, Vanity Fair, Walk the Line and Just Like Heaven — all from 2001 to 2005.
Before Jennifer Lawrence had her big break in The Hunger Games, she auditioned for the role of Allie. However, Barry recalled that she was just 13 years old at the time, so "she was way too young," he told E! News.
Lawrence continued auditioning as a young teenager and scored her first major role on the sitcom The Bill Engvall Show (2007-2009) and the film Winter's Bone (2010). In 2012, she skyrocketed to fame when she acted as Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games film series.
Scarlett Johansson has not openly spoken about auditioning for Allie, but Barry told the Daily Mail that she was one of the women who auditioned for the role.
At the time of her audition, she had started to see success from her roles in The Horse Whisperer (1998) and Ghost World (2001). However, she didn't let the process get her down, and she scored a BAFTA Award for Best Actress for her role in the 2003 movie Lost in Translation. Over the next three years, she acted in Girl with a Pearl Earring, A Love Song for Bobby Long, Match Point and Scoop, among others.
At the time of The Notebook auditions, Kate Beckinsale had been receiving praise for her role in the 2001 movie Pearl Harbor with Ben Affleck. Barry explained that because of her rise to stardom, they immediately thought of her early on in the role.
"Nick flew to San Francisco to go meet with her," Barry told E! News. "And there was no chemistry between the two of them. So Nick was like, 'She's out, find me somebody.' "
Shortly after being passed over for the role, Beckinsale found success when she starred as Selene in the Underworld film franchise from 2003 to 2016. She also went on to act in The Aviator (2004), Van Helsing (2004) and Click (2006).
Jessica Biel had already solidified her acting chops by the time she was approached to audition for The Notebook. In 2002, Biel had already starred in 7th Heaven and Ulee's Gold (1997) and was working on the 2003 film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre when she read the part of Allie.
"The director Nick, Ryan and I actually flew to Texas where she was filming Texas Chainsaw Massacre and taped her in her trailer between shots," Barry recalled to the Daily Mail.
Biel also rehashed the audition during a May 2025 episode of The View when she remembered thinking that The Notebook would be "the greatest option for me in my career."
"We auditioned in my trailer at work, and I didn't get it of course, we know this is the answer," she said. "But in my mind I just remember having blood on me and being in that white tank top, and took my cowboy hat off, and was like, 'Okay, I'd love to fall in love with you, let's do this.' It was very strange, a very Hollywood moment, you know?"
Biel went on to act in The Rules of Attraction (2002), Blade: Trinity (2004), Stealth (2005) and The Illusionist (2006).
Barry confirmed to the Daily Mail that Amy Adams was one of the women who originally auditioned for Allie.
Adams, who has not spoken about her audition, made her film debut in the 1999 film Drop Dead Gorgeous, but she had her breakout role in the 2002 movie Catch Me If You Can and later Junebug in 2005.
Claire Danes was another actress Barry named who auditioned for Allie.
When Danes tried out for Allie in 2002, she had already had success while starring in the 1994 teen drama series My So-Called Life — where she won a Golden Globe Award and earned an Emmy Award nomination. She also acted in Little Women (1994), Romeo + Juliet (1996), The Rainmaker (1997) and Brokedown Palace (1999).
From 2002 to 2005, she starred in several films, including Igby Goes Down (2002), The Hours (2002), Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), Stage Beauty (2004), Shopgirl (2005) and The Family Stone (2005).
Mandy Moore auditioned for the role of Allie but ultimately wasn't chosen, according to Barry.
At the time of her 2002 audition, Moore had already solidified her career as a pop star with the release of her first studio album, So Real in 1999. She also began acting and had roles in The Princess Diaries (2001), A Walk to Remember (2002), How to Deal (2003) and Chasing Liberty (2004). Even though she didn't snag The Notebook role, she continued her dual career by singing and acting and went on to star on Racing Stripes (2005), Because I Said So (2007) and License to Wed (2007), among others.
Jennifer Love Hewitt was one of the final six actresses narrowed down for Allie, Barry told E! News.
Before throwing her hat into the ring for The Notebook, Hewitt had already broken through in Hollywood and had starring roles in Party of Five (1995-1999), I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) and its sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998), Heartbreakers (2001) and The Tuxedo (2002). After The Notebook premiered in 2004, Hewitt acted in the two Garfield live-action films (2004-2006) and the drama Ghost Whisperer (2005-2010).
Barry told the Daily Mail that Kate Bosworth was one of the actresses they recruited to audition for Allie, but she wasn't a final contender.
Bosworth has not spoken about the audition, but she previously recalled struggling during auditions at that time in her career. During a 2019 episode of Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, Bosworth revealed that she auditioned for the role of Mary Jane Watson in the 2002 film Spider-Man but lost out to Kirsten Dunst after she "tanked" the audition.
'I tanked it really, really badly,' she said at the time. 'Auditioning is literally a layer of hell. It just sucks regardless, and I was really nervous. ... I was not good at it. I knew. I just kind of froze. And I was really young!'
At the time of her 2002 audition, Bosworth had wrapped filming the hit movie Blue Crush. She went on to star in Wonderland (2003), Beyond the Sea (2004) and Superman Returns (2006).
In addition to McAdams, Spears and Hewitt, Jaime King was one of the final six actors who were in talks to play Allie, Barry told E! News.
Before auditioning for The Notebook in 2002, King had already had a successful modeling career since getting discovered at 14 years old. She transitioned into acting in 2001 with the movie Pearl Harbor and later went on to star in Bulletproof Monk (2003), White Chicks (2004) and Sin City (2005).
While Barry and Cassavetes were meeting with different actresses to play Allie, Gosling suggested that Jane McGregor should be considered for the role.
Barry told E! News that Gosling was a "big champion" for McGregor, so she was "high on everyone's list at the time."
Before trying out for Allie, McGregor had starred in the 2002 comedy, Slap Her... She's French and the independent film Flower & Garnet. She later acted in Supernatural (2005), That Beautiful Somewhere (2006) and Robson Arms (2005-2008).
Tom Cruise was once considered for the role of Noah. However, Cassavetes later decided against the idea of Cruise, because he didn't want "an actor that's fallen in love with 10 other actresses [on screen]," he told Entertainment Weekly in 2024.
"I've seen him do it a million times. Then you get to the point where you're like, oh, look, it's Tom Cruise, falling in love with somebody different this time. It doesn't feel quite as authentic," he explained. "And we were lucky to have them at the beginning of their careers. And you really believed it."
Cruise had already had a decades-long acting career. He rose to fame in the films Risky Business (1983), Top Gun (1986) and Rain Man (1988). At the time of The Notebook, Cruise had already won a Golden Globe Award for Magnolia in 1999 and later acted in Vanilla Sky (2001), Minority Report (2002), The Last Samurai (2003) and Collateral (2004).
George Clooney was another swoon-worthy actor who almost stole hearts as Noah.
Before The Notebook cast Gosling as young Noah and James Garner as older Noah, Clooney was in talks to play young Noah alongside Paul Newman. Clooney explained in 2020 that he was close with the late Newman, so they thought it would be "great" to play younger and older versions of themselves.
'We were going to do The Notebook together,' Clooney said at the time, according to Deadline. 'Basically, I was going to play him as a young man, and it was funny. We met and said, 'This is it. It's going to be great.' "
However, Clooney later backed out of the idea after he watched some of Newman's films from when he was Clooney's age, and he didn't think he could stack up.
"He's one of the handsomest guys you've ever seen. We met up [again] and I said, 'I can't play you. I don't look anything like you. This is insane,' " Clooney shared. "We just wanted to do it because we wanted to work together, [but] it ended up being not the right thing for us to do."
Clooney had already asserted himself as a heartthrob on the medical drama ER (1994-1999) and later acted in the hit movies From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), Three Kings (1999) and the Ocean's film series (2001-2007). He went on to win an Oscar for the movie Syriana in 2005 and got nominated for Oscars in the films Michael Clayton (2007), Up in the Air (2009) and The Descendants (2011).
Before Barry and Cassavetes chose Gosling, they expressed interest in Hayden Christensen because of his role as Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader in the Star Wars film franchise. Before meeting with him, Barry and Cassavetes went to see him in one of their beloved sci-fi films and decided that they wouldn't be moving forward, Barry told E! News.
Christensen continued acting in the Star Wars prequel trilogy films from 2002 to 2005 and also acted in Shattered Glass (2003), Awake (2007) and Jumper (2008).
Clooney explained in 2020 that he and Newman were originally in talks to play the older and younger versions of Noah. However, after Clooney backed out, Newman also did, and his role went to James Garner.
Newman was an award-winning actor, philanthropist and director for most of his life before he died in 2008 at the age of 83. He won an Oscar for his role in The Color of Money (1986) and got nominated for his performances in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), The Hustler (1961), Hud (1963), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Absence of Malice (1981), The Verdict (1982), Nobody's Fool (1994) and Road to Perdition (2002). At the time of The Notebook, he was starring in Road to Perdition, Empire Falls (2005) and the Broadway play Our Town (2003).
In addition to the roles of Allie and Noah, The Notebook also featured the character of Allie's fiancé Lon Hammond. James Marsden ultimately scored the role, but Bradley Cooper was also up for the job, Barry told E! News.
However, they ultimately advocated for Marsden because of his performance in X-Men (2000). Barry said of Marsden, "He's just the absolute greatest. Hollywood is full of dysfunctional people and a------- and he's not one of them. He was just fantastic."
Despite not getting the role in The Notebook, Cooper made his film debut in Wet Hot American Summer (2001) and later starred in Alias (2001-2006) before rising to fame for his roles in Wedding Crashers (2005) and The Hangover (2009).
Read the original article on People