Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling have both found significant success in Hollywood. The former is tied to huge hits like Mean Girls and Doctor Strange, while the latter is known for rom-coms like Crazy, Stupid, Love and the Academy Award-winning masterpiece La La Land, among others. However, no matter how many years pass or how many movies they make, McAdams and Gosling will always be remembered as Allie and Noah from the classic romance movie The Notebook.
The 2004 film based on the Nicholas Sparks novel of the same name bowled audiences over with a love story so complex, so tender, and so unapologetically moving that to watch it and not cry became akin to committing a crime. McAdams and Goslings’ portrayal of Allie and Noah became the 21st century’s Romeo and Juliet. Even all these years later The Notebook sits high up on the list of must-see movies for any romance lover.
The on-screen chemistry between McAdams and Gosling was so palpable that to suggest they were only friends in real life feels almost sacrilegious. Surely they dated? Surely some of that chemistry was real, right? Right? Tell us we’re not crazy.
Did life imitate art, or was it all just good acting?
McAdams and Gosling did indeed begin dating after filming The Notebook. On the 10 year anniversary of the movie’s premiere, director Nick Cassavetes revealed to VH1 that in between scripted kisses and professions of love, the two whipped each other on set with their tongues, and not in the good way.
It got to a point, Cassavetes said, that Gosling wanted McAdams kicked off the set.
“Maybe I’m not supposed to tell this story, but they were really not getting along one day on set. Really not. And Ryan came to me, and there’s 150 people standing in this big scene, and he says, ‘Nick come here.’ And 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 said, ‘What?’ He says, ‘I can’t. I can’t do it with her. I’m just not getting anything from this.'”
Cassavetes took the pair into a room where they hashed it out, and after getting things off their chest, he said “the rest of the film wasn’t smooth sailing, but it was smoother sailing.”
Then, in a twist of fate one can only describe as life imitating art, McAdams and Gosling began dating in real life. From 2005 to 2007 they plucked at the collective heartstring of fans all across the globe. At the 2005 MTV Movie Awards they even created a pop culture moment so iconic it spawned a generation of hopeless romantics. After winning Best Kiss, McAdams and Gosling flung themselves at each other on stage just as they had in The Notebook, sending the entire theater into a concert of applause. The moment was so iconic it solidified the pair a legion of fans devoted enough to stick with them even after they ultimately broke things off in 2007.
The year they broke up, Gosling opened up to GQ about how he and McAdams “went down swingin'” trying to make their relationship work, just as Noah and Allie had in The Notebook. Unlike the characters, they eventually “called it a draw.”
Driving the knife even further into our guts, Gosling said, “I mean, God bless The Notebook. It introduced me to one of the great loves of my life. But people do Rachel and me a disservice by assuming we were anything like the people in that movie. Rachel and my love story is a hell of a lot more romantic than that.”
In the decade and a half that has passed since McAdams and Gosling broke up, the two found love in new partners. McAdams has been in a relationship with screenwriter Jamie Linden since 2016 and the couple share two children together. Gosling married fellow actress Eva Mendes in 2011, and they also share two children together. Both are still happily with their respective partners.
