Jessica Biel recalls auditioning for ‘The Notebook’ with Ryan Gosling while ‘covered in blood’: ‘It was very strange’

Love is a battlefield, and no one embodied that better than Jessica Biel when she auditioned for The Notebook — while covered in blood.

During a recent appearance on The View, Biel was sharing photos of herself covered in fake gore on the set of her new thriller series The Better Sister, when the memory came up. “I was shooting the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I was super young, and I auditioned for The Notebook, which was going to be the greatest option for me in my career, like what an amazing thing to get after [Massacre],” she said, referring to the 2003 horror movie remake.

For the Notebook audition, star Ryan Gosling and director Nick Cassavetes actually came to Biel on the Massacre set, and did it all on location — hence all of the fake blood. “We auditioned in my trailer at work, and I didn’t get it of course, we know this is the answer,” she recalled, adding, “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.'”

She concluded, “It was very strange, a very Hollywood moment, you know?”

Of course, Rachel McAdams would eventually get the coveted role of Allie in the beloved 2004 romance, which was based on the Nicholas Sparks novel of the same name. The tearjerker of a story follows an elderly man (James Garner) living in a nursing home with his wife (Gena Rowlands), who has dementia. He spends his days reading her the story of their long love (played out in flashbacks by Gosling and McAdams) so that she’ll remember him.

Biel wasn’t the only famous face to lose out on the role. Britney Spears (who, ironically, once famously dated Biel’s husband, Justin Timberlake), also auditioned for Allie.

In her memoir The Woman in Me, Spears said she was “glad” that she didn’t get the role, citing her issues with method acting on set of her 2002 film, Crossroads. “The experience wasn’t easy for me,” she wrote. “My problem wasn’t with anyone involved in the production but with what acting did to my mind. I think I started Method acting — only I didn’t know how to break out of my character. I really became this other person.”

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“Even though it would have been fun to reconnect with Ryan Gosling after our time on The Mickey Mouse Club,” Spears added of The Notebook, “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 . . . I hope I never get close to that occupational hazard again.”

Claire Danes and Scarlett Johansson were also at one time in contention for the part.

Watch the full conversation with Biel in the View episode, above.