Britney Spears has revealed that she went so deep into Method acting for Crossroads that it soured her outlook on acting — enough so that she’s happy she didn’t book a high-profile role opposite her former Mickey Mouse Club costar Ryan Gosling in the hit 2004 romance The Notebook.
As the 41-year-old pop superstar prepares for the launch of her Woman in Me memoir, she reflected on her life and career in a new interview with PEOPLE, which also included an excerpt from the upcoming book.
“The experience wasn’t easy for me,” Spears wrote of her time filming writer Shonda Rhimes‘ 2002 drama following a trio of friends on a cross-country road trip. “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. Some people do Method acting, but they’re usually aware of the fact that they’re doing it. But I didn’t have any separation at all.”
She added that the experience led her to walk, talk, and carry herself differently, and it stayed with her for months.
Though it performed well at the global box office on a relatively modest budget, Crossroads was a critical disappointment, and, as Spears noted in the excerpt, marked the conclusion of her acting aspirations.
“That was pretty much the beginning and end of my acting career, and I was relieved,” she wrote, eventually elaborating on the time she was nearly cast in the big-screen adaptation of author Nicholas Sparks’ beloved book. “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. If I had, instead of working on my album In the Zone I’d have been acting like a 1940s heiress day and night.”
Everett Collection
She concluded that many actors likely have “trouble separating themselves from a character” and that she doesn’t envy their position.
“I hope I never get close to that occupational hazard again,” she wrote. “Living that way, being half yourself and half a fictional character, is messed up. After a while you don’t know what’s real anymore.”
Spears’ Woman in Me memoir comes after a landmark period in her life that included the termination of her controversial, 13-year conservatorship and a return to pop music — and the American charts — via her Elton John collaboration “Hold Me Closer,” following her multiyear break from recording.
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