Watch Britney Spears’ Long-Hidden ‘Notebook’ Screen Test
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After 21 years, footage from Britney Spears’ audition for The Notebook has finally been released. The Daily Mail got the tape, which had been kept under wraps for years.
Casting director Michael Barry was the one to finally share the footage, after keeping it under lock and key for decades. He told The Daily Mail that Spears was the frontrunner for the role of Allie — ahead of the likes of Claire Danes, Scarlett Johansson, and Amy Adams. She eventually lost out to Rachel McAdams.
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“It was a tough decision,” Barry said. “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.”
In the nearly three-minute clip, Spears reads lines with the film’s leading man Ryan Gosling. The pair had previously worked together on The Mickey Mouse Club a decade prior. Spears gives a tearful reading of the scene where Allie tells Noah that they can’t rekindle their romance since she married Captain Lon Hammond Jr. (played in the film by James Marsden).
In her upcoming memoir, The Woman in Me, Spears talks about losing out the role and being thankful that her acting career was cut short. After finding it difficult to leave behind the character she played in Crossroads, she was worried the same would happen after immersing herself in the dramatic film.
“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 her book, via 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.
“I imagine there are people in the acting field who have dealt with something like that, where they had trouble separating themselves from a character.
“I hope I never get close to that occupational hazard again,” she continues. “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.”
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