THE NOTEBOOK may be one of the best-loved on-screen romances of our time, with one of the most beloved heroes in Ryan Gosling's Noah Calhoun - but the book's author says that the lead role in the film adaptation of his novel wasn't has hotly contested as you might imagine.
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"No one wanted to play Noah. It was incredibly hard to find an actor willing to play him," author Nicholas Sparks told IMdb Asks. "A lot of the actors said, 'Well, what's Noah's arc?' It's a guy who falls in love and then he just kinda does nothing, and then waits for her to show up, and then he's there and he's still in love, and then at the end of the film, well, he's still in love. Where's the arc?"
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Fortunately, Gosling's appointment - and his unbelievable on-screen chemistry with co-star Rachel McAdams - saved the movie from years of "development hell".
"Ryan Gosling came in and really showed what you can do, even if the arc was relatively minimal," Sparks confessed, as he promoted the latest big-screen adaptation of one of his books, The Choice. "He and Nick Cassavetes, the director, and of course all of the screenwriters, came in and we were amazed what they were able to do with it."
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