Fresh off Britney Spears‘ reveal in her upcoming memoir, “The Woman in Me,” that she made it to the final round of auditions to play Allie opposite Ryan Gosling in “The Notebook, the Daily Mail has exclusively shared the pop singer’s emotional casting tape. In the video, Spears is brought to the edge of tears while reading a scene opposite Gosling, who is off camera during the audition. The singer, who had previously only acted in the film “Crossroads” at the time of this audition, was tasked with reading a scene in which Allie tells Gosling’s Noah she is going to marry another man.
“I’m not staying,” Spears says in character. “I tried to call you to tell you that I wasn’t going to stay — but nobody answered the phone… Noah, you can’t marry two people. And I’m marrying Lon, so I should go, okay?”
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“I prayed for you to die in the war, really,” Spears says as her eyes well up with tears. “Well, not die. I would have felt completely horrible if you would die. But I kinda didn’t want you to be alive anymore because I couldn’t bear the thought of you being with somebody else, or of us never seeing each other again. So I gotta go, okay?”
Hollywood casting director Matthew Barry shared the video of Spears’ audition with the Daily Mail and said that “Britney wasn’t just good” in her session with Gosling, “she was phenomenal.” The audition tape was recorded in Los Angeles on Aug. 18, 2002.
“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.”
Barry continued, “Britney beat out several of the top female actresses at the time. Scarlett Johansson, Claire Danes, Kate Bosworth, Amy Adams, Jamie King and Mandy Moore auditioned for this role. Britney beat out all of them. Everybody who was anybody that year wanted this part.”
Spears writes in her memoir that the “Notebook” casting for Allie came down to her and Rachel McAdams, who ultimately won the part. Spears was not angry about losing out on the role.
“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. “If I had, instead of working on my album ‘In the Zone’ I’d have been acting like a 1940s heiress day and night.”
Spears’ acting career started and ended with her 2002 movie “Crossroads,” the making of which proved difficult for her.
“My problem wasn’t with anyone involved in the production but with what acting did to my mind,” she writes. “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. I ended up walking differently, carrying myself differently, talking differently. I was someone else for months while I filmed ‘Crossroads.’ Still to this day, I bet the girls I shot that movie with think, She’s a little… quirky. If they thought that, they were right.”
“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,” Spears continues. “I hope I never get close to that occupational hazard again. 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’ “The Woman in Me” releases Oct. 24. Watch her audition for “The Notebook” in the video below.