16 surprising things you probably didn't know about 'The Notebook'

The film is based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks, but the author wrote on his website that Allie and Noah were based on his then-wife's grandparents.

They were together for over 60 years, and Sparks was impressed with how strong their love for each other was.

"They told us the story of how they met and fell in love, parts of which eventually made their way into 'The Notebook,'" Sparks wrote.

Director Nick Cassavetes wanted to cast a male lead who was a bit more of an everyman than typical Hollywood heartthrobs.

Per Us Weekly, Ryan Gosling told Company magazine in 2012 that Cassavetes 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."

Entertainment Tonight reported that pop star Britney Spears was originally in talks to play Allie. If Spears had gotten the role, she would've been reunited her with Gosling, her former "Mickey Mouse Club" costar.

Reese Witherspoon, Jessica Biel, and Jessica Simpson were also considered for Allie before the role went to Rachel McAdams.

The two lead actors ended up dating for a period of time after meeting on set, but during filming, Gosling once requested that a different scene partner be brought in when he clashed with McAdams.

Cassavetes recalled the moment in a 2014 interview with VH1.

"[T]hey were really not getting along one day on set. Really not," he said, "And Ryan came to me … 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 can't. I can't do it with her. I'm just not getting anything from this.'"

Luckily they made it work for the movie, even if their romantic relationship didn't stand the test of time in real life.

Maclean's magazine reported that McAdams took ballet and etiquette classes to perfect the refined nature that her Southern belle character Allie would've had.

In a 2004 interview with IGN, the actress said that she also worked with a dialect coach for two months to get Allie's Southern accent down.

Noah becomes a woodworker who builds his own house so to get proper training Gosling did an apprenticeship with a cabinetmaker in Charleston, South Carolina, before filming.

The actor told People in 2004 that he ended up making the two chairs that Noah and Allie sit in on the front porch of the house. He also made the table that Noah and Allie have a romantic moment on.

Gosling wanted to keep the table, but it went back to the cabinetmaker he apprenticed with.

Gosling has blue eyes in real life but, according to VH1, he had to wear brown contacts to match the eyes of James Garner, who played older Noah.

The novel is told mostly from Noah's point of view, so Allie doesn't get as much character exploration. The movie, however, changed that to give Noah and Allie equal levels of perspective throughout the film.

"I was grateful for the changes because it made my role significantly bigger," McAdams told IGN in 2004. "I'm glad they've explored the young love a lot more. I think that it makes the end so much richer because you get to see their memories and you get to see the memories that she's losing and the tragedy in that."

Cassavetes cast his mother Gena Rowlands as the older version of Allie in the film.

Rowlands is an actress in her own right who started her career back in the 1950s. And "The Notebook" is not the only one of her son's films she's appeared in.

She was also in "Yellow" (2012), "She's So Lovely" (1997), and "Unhook the Stars" (1996).

James Marsden played Lon Hammond, Allie's boyfriend-turned -fiancé who she was with after her breakup with Noah.

Even years after the film's release, Marsden said he still gets fans coming up to him who are angry that his character almost kept Allie and Noah apart.

"They're just disgusted by me," Marsden told Vulture in 2015. "It's just funny how people carry it with them … some people are like, 'I can't even look at you.'"

But he also told the publication that he occasionally hears people say they would've stayed with him.

Cassavetes told VH1 in 2014 that, according to the script, during the big fight scene Noah was just supposed to say to Allie: "Would you stop thinking about what everyone wants. Stop thinking about what I want, what he wants, what your parents want."

Gosling then decided to add, "What do you want? What do you want?"

Cassavetes was really blown away by the improvisation, which has since become the highlight of a well-known moment in the film.

At one point in the film, Noah and Allie row through a lake completely filled with swans. But the scene was almost birdless because people were concerned that untrained animals would create chaos on set.

Cassavetes told VH1 in the 2014 interview that they decided to get a bunch of hatchlings and raise them on the lake so they were comfortable in and familiar with the area.

At the late basketball player Kobe Bryant's memorial in 2020, his wife Vanessa Bryant recalled how Kobe once hunted down the actual blue dress that McAdams wore during the iconic kiss-in-the-rain scene in "The Notebook."

He wanted to give it to Vanessa for Valentine's Day in honor of the couple's own 2013 reconciliation.

"When I asked him why he chose the blue dress, he said it was because it was the scene when Allie comes back to Noah," Vanessa said. "We had hoped to grow old together like the movie."

She has previously posted a photo of the costume on her Instagram page.

At the 2005 MTV Movie Awards, "The Notebook" won for best kiss thanks to Gosling and McAdams' passionate, rain-soaked smooch in the film.

When the actors walked on stage to accept their award, they reenacted the passionate moment to roaring applause.

It likely would have broken fans' hearts to see Noah torch the house he'd worked so hard to build, but Cassavetes said in his 2014 VH1 interview that Gosling floated the idea by him.

"He'd come to me and say, 'Why can't I burn the house down?'" the director recalled. "I'd say, 'Because I don't even know what that means.' And [Gosling would] say, 'Cleansing my fire!'"

Whatever that meant, they did not go in that direction — and the house is still standing today.

Sparks' book "The Wedding" was published in 2003 as a sequel to "The Notebook."

The plot follows Allie and Noah's daughter Jane and her love story with a man named Wilson.

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