'The Notebook' Fun Facts and Trivia

Ryan and Rachel discussed the love scenes ahead of time.

These two had a verrrrry awkward interview about The Notebook's sex scenes when the movie came out, and Rachel said that for the most part, she and Ryan had a conversation beforehand. "I knew he was going to be a gentleman," she added.

But they didn't rehearse much before filming.

"We didn't rehearse a lot," Ryan said during a throwback interview. "We weren't gonna make the movie when we were auditioning, we were just seeing if there was a girl who could play this part."

They lived totally separate lives in Charleston before filming.

Rachel said, "In the two months leading up to the film, we were both in Charleston, doing prep work, but very separate."

"It kinda worked I think," she added, "because we were supposed to be playing these people from opposite ends of the spectrum who come together and find each other and complement each other in their opposites."

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Rachel 'bawled her eyes out' reading the script.

"I read the script the night before and bawled my eyes out," she said in a BTS featurette that's honestly a must-watch. "I'm surprised I even got up the next day, I was just wrecked by it."

And her audition was so good, everyone cried.

"We were all sort of crying," Rachel said of her emotional audition. "Matthew Berry, the casting director, was filming and he had to stop and get a tissue and stuff, it was really nice. And then we did the third scene and it was pretty electric."

Buuut Ryan tried to kick Rachel off the movie.

I'm personally pretending like this is simply not true, but here you go, if you prefer not to be in denial:

"Maybe I'm not supposed to tell this story, but they were really not getting along one day on set. Really not," director Nick Cassavetes revealed to VH1. "And Ryan came to me, and there's 150 people standing in this big scene, and he says, 'Nick come here.' And he's doing a scene with Rachel and he says, 'Would you take her out of here and bring in another actress to read off camera with me?' I said, 'What?' He says, 'I can’t. I can't do it with her. I'm just not getting anything from this.'"

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

They ended up having a screaming fight on set.

"We went into a room with a producer; they started screaming and yelling at each other," Nick recalled. "I walked out. At that point I was smoking cigarettes. I smoked a cigarette and everybody came out like, 'All right let's do this.' And it got better after that, you know? They had it out... I think Ryan respected her for standing up for her character and Rachel was happy to get that out in the open. The rest of the film wasn't smooth sailing, but it was smoother sailing."

There's a *really good* deleted scene that didn't make the final cut.

You. are. welcome.

Ryan wore colored contacts.

Nick Cassavetes said that dreamy blue-eyed Ryan decided to wear brown contact lenses to look more like James Garner (aka Old Noah).

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Jessica Biel auditioned for Allie while covered in blood.

Jessica was one of many celeb names circling the part of Allie, and her audition was wild."That's one that I wanted so badly," she said.

"I was in the middle of shooting Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and I auditioned with Ryan Gosling in my trailer—covered in blood. Nick Cassavetes put me through the wringer in an interesting, excitingly creative way. But there's a million that get away. We're gluttons for punishment. It's just rejection."

Kate Beckinsale auditioned, too, but had zero chemistry with Ryan.

Truly can't relate, but casting director Matthew Barry said, "Nick flew to San Francisco to go meet with her and there was no chemistry between the two of them. So Nick was like, 'She's out, find me somebody.'"

Ryan wanted Jane McGregor to play Allie.

Jane was a rising actor from Canada, and apparently, Ryan was rooting for her to play Allie.

"Allie was a tough role, it was not an easy role and we tried to will this girl and Ryan really, really responded to her," casting director Matthew Barry explained. "She just didn't have it. We went to dinner and [Ryan] was like, 'Let me go work with her, let me go work with her.' And he went and worked with her and came back and still couldn't get there."

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Britney Spears auditioned for the role too.

As she put it in her memoir, "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 All-New 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."

Watch her audition video over here!

Ryan got cast because he...wasn't handsome?

Ryan himself confirmed this factually untrue nugget of info, saying, "The director, Nick Cassavetes, called me to meet him at his house. When I got there, he was standing in his backyard, and he looked at me and said, 'I want you to play this role because you're not like the other young actors out there in Hollywood. You're not handsome, you're not cool, you're just a regular guy who looks a bit nuts."

Truly, ARE WE LOOKING AT THE SAME PERSON, NICK CASSAVETES?

Hayden Christensen was a contender for Noah, but 'couldn't act.'

The team went to check out Hayden in Star Wars, but as casting director Matthew Barry bluntly put it, "We lasted probably 20-25 minutes and we were like, 'He cannot act.' Nick turned to me and my partner at the time and said, 'Who do you got?'" Harsh!

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Steven Spielberg almost directed...and cast Tom Cruise.

According to E! News, Steven Spielberg was originally lined up to direct The Notebook and wanted Tom Cruise to play Noah. Fortunately, some (me) might say, "scheduling conflicts" got in the way.

Ryan improvised the iconic 'What do you want?!' line.

It came straight from his beautiful brain!

Or, as Nick Cassavetes put it, "There was a scene at the end where Ryan improvised, 'What do you want? What do you want?' And it became one of the most iconic things from the film [that] wasn't in the script. He just knew it. I'm a literary guy, I was a lit major in college and I like words, but I also like improvisation, [so] that's fine. But he was so on it. We just let him go."

Allie's famous blue dress was custom-made.

Costume designer Karyn Wagner said, "We wanted to communicate with [the] audience why she woke up that morning and picked out that blue dress. She wants to say something to him. The color of that dress is about hope. It's not a very ornate dress. It's got just enough detail to make it interesting … it's a classic dress, but it says a lot about her and her hopes for this day."

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

The bird scene almost didn't make the final cut.

Like, can you imagine the movie without this scene? Me neither, but apparently New Line tried to shut it down for bird-related reasons.

"We went into New Line and they were like, 'You can’t do the birds. There’s just too much—you've got to take the birds out," Nick Cassavetes revealed. "We said, 'How come?' And they said, 'It just doesn’t work. We talked to every animal wrangler—you can't do it. The birds aren't trained. You've got to take it out.' Well, the producer and I didn’t listen very much."

SOMEONE GIVE THIS FLOCK AN OSCAR.

Ryan wanted Noah to burn the house down.

VH1's interview with Nick Cassavetes is truly the gift that keeps on giving, because the man loves to dish. And he went ahead and revealed that Ryan wanted to burn down the house Noah built for Allie:

"He'd come to me and say, 'Why can’t I burn the house down?' Cassavetes said. "I'd say, 'Because I don't even know what that means.' And he'd say, 'Cleansing my fire!'"

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pLvSpqapp5yewaK6jZympmeVo8GmvtOaoKellaPBcK%2FEpZybq1%2BcgXeFlHJvcmtfqbWmec2oq56an6S4brnOr6CeZaSntre1wGg%3D