Ryan Gosling became a heartthrob after starring in the 2004 romantic feature The Notebook alongside Rachel McAdams. The film about a young couple who stopped at nothing to be together touched hearts everywhere.
But Gosling saw evidence that The Notebook might have been more destructive for relationships than some might have expected.
Ryan Gosling considered ‘The Notebook’ a very important part of his life
Being cast in The Notebook was a turning point in Gosling’s professional and personal life. It was one of the many features that boosted Gosling’s name recognition in Hollywood. But it also affected Gosling’s love life, as it united him with his co-star and future girlfriend Rachel McAdams. Apart from the movie’s influence on his career, the actor was simply a fan of its story as well.
“There were struggles making it, but it was great in so many ways,” Gosling once told The Denver Post. “I like the romantic part of it, the idea of making love stories. There’s a John Cassavetes quote, that movies should be about love or the lack of it, and more people should do movies that way.”
Gosling expressed that there was barely a day that went by where fans didn’t remind him of the movie’s impact.
“I can’t tell you how many people come up to me and tell me that’s their story, or their parents’ story. A movie’s no good if it doesn’t alienate certain people. You can’t have everyone,” he said.
Ryan Gosling once believed ‘The Notebook’ could actually be bad for relationships
Gosling’s The Notebook didn’t always have the swooning effects on couples that many claimed it did. The Drive star saw firsthand how his film could create unrealistic expectations in a relationship.
“People would come up to me and tell me that they thought [The Notebook] was romantic, but one guy told me that he was engaged and [his fiancée] broke up with him after that movie because she said to him, ‘You wouldn’t build a house for me [like the lead character does], would you?’ He was like, ‘Well, no, but I don’t know how,’” Gosling once recalled to Vulture. “She said, ‘But if you knew how?’ He said, ‘No, I wouldn’t. But it doesn’t mean I don’t love you.’ She said, ‘Yeah, it does.’”
The engagement didn’t last long afterwards, which showed Gosling how The Notebook could actually pose a risk to relationships.
“If you see some of those movies, then you look at your own romance and it doesn’t compare, you think, oh, what I have isn’t love because that’s love,” he said.
Ryan Gosling joked that ‘The Notebook affected his own relationship with Rachel McAdams
Gosling once quipped that he experienced the negative influencesof his own film while dating McAdams. Although they weren’t their Notebook characters, Gosling still joked that McAdams wanted him to duplicate their on-screen love affair in real-life.
“Yeah, every time I come home, Rachel screams, ‘Why didn’t you write me?’ Every morning I put arrows outside her bed. And I build her a house everywhere,” Gosling once teased on W Magazine.
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