The Hollywood romance film The Notebook might have turned out very different had one casting option had pushed through.

Casting director Matthew Berry recently shared an exclusive video of Britney Spears auditioning for the lead role of the film.

In an exclusive interview with Daily Mail, the casting director shared “how close a then-21-year-old Britney Spears came to clinching the lead role after putting on a stunningly emotional display during her screen test with [Ryan] Gosling.”

“Britney wasn't just good—she was phenomenal,” said Barry expressing how the pop icon “beat out several of the top female actresses at the time,” including “Scarlett Johansson, Claire Danes, Kate Bosworth, Amy Adams, Jamie King, and Mandy Moore who auditioned for the same role.”

The report also said that Britney was the frontrunner for the part of Allie before the creators of the movie ultimately settled on a then-newcomer Rachel McAdams.

“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,” the casting director expressed.

In the clip, Britney was slowly tearing up as she delivered the line of Allie with Ryan Gosling, who played Noah in the film and was standing off-camera.

Britney was dressed in a white lace top with her hair down in the audition tape.

“I'm not staying. I tried to call you to tell you that I wasn’t going to stay but nobody answered the phone,” Britney said while acting out the role of Allie.

“Noah, you can’t marry two people. And I’m marrying Lon, so I should go, okay?”

She then started crying as she told Ryan: “I prayed for you to die in the war, really. Well not die. I would have felt completely horrible if you would die.”

She continued, “But I just.. I kinda didn’t want you to be alive anymore because I couldn’t bear the thought of you being with somebody else, or, of us never seeing each other again. So I gotta go, okay?”

Matthew Berry said of the audition, “Britney beat out all of them. Everybody who was anybody that year wanted this part.”

The Pop Icon confirmed in her memoir, The Woman in Me, that she once auditioned for the phenomenal role.

“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,” she revealed.

Britney said that if she had accepted the role she would have “been acting like a 1940s heiress day and night” instead of working on her album In the Zone.

She continued: “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.”

The superstar shared that she “had been left overwhelmed by the acting process after playing Lucy Wagner in coming-of-age film Crossroads” where she wishes to “never get close to that occupational hazard again.”

The audition video was released to the public hours before her most-awaited and controversial memoir was released.

READ: Britney Spears reveals she got pregnant while dating Justin Timberlake

—By Nikka Sabio