In addition to almost taking on the role of Allie opposite Ryan Gosling’s Noah in the hit 2004 film The Notebook, Britney Spears was also this close to playing the role of Elle Woods in 2001’s Legally Blonde, Bustle reports. (The part of Allie ultimately went to Rachel McAdams; Elle Woods, of course, was famously played by Reese Witherspoon.)
Legally Blonde writer Kiwi Smith revealed on an episode of the “Hollywood Gold” podcast that Spears was under consideration for the role—but when Smith saw Witherspoon in her breakout film, 1999’s Election, she knew she had found her Elle. “The name Britney Spears was briefly floated,” Smith said. “But then Election had just come out, and once we talked about Reese…It just felt like, ‘Oh my God, this is the woman to play Elle.’”
Spears mentioned almost starring in The Notebook and 2002’s Chicago in her 2023 memoir The Woman in Me but has never commented about Legally Blonde—signifying “she may not have even been aware that she was considered for the role of Elle Woods,” Bustle reports.
Spears was clearly on the screenwriters’ minds, though—in one of the deleted scenes from the movie, Spears is referenced. In the clip, Elle tearfully walks into her bedroom, falls down on her bed, and tells her sorority sisters that her boyfriend, Warner, had broken up with her because he wanted to be with somebody more “serious.” One of her sorority sisters blamed Warner’s grandmother, which Elle denied. “No, she really likes me,” she said. “She told me I look like Britney Spears, and why would you say that to somebody you don’t like?” (Fair point.)
As for The Notebook, “Everybody who was anybody that year wanted this part,” the film’s casting director Michael Barry said. In addition to Spears and McAdams, Claire Danes, Scarlett Johannsson, Amy Adams, Kate Bosworth, Jamie King, Mandy Moore, and Jessica Biel all went out for the role of Allie, The Daily Mail reports. Though The Notebook ultimately came out in 2004, Spears auditioned in 2002, the same year her film Crossroads came out; in her memoir, Spears expressed relief over not having to step back in front of the camera so soon after filming Crossroads, and said it allowed her to focus on her music.
“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 Mickey Mouse Club, I’m glad I didn’t do it,” Spears wrote in The Woman in Me. “If I had, instead of working on my album In the Zone, I’d have been acting like a 1940s heiress day and night.”
Of Spears’ audition, Barry said “Britney wasn’t just good—she was phenomenal. It was a tough decision. 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.”
