Britney Spears accidentally got a bit too into Method acting in Crossroads
Spears starred in the 2002 road-trip comedy with Zoe Saldaña and Taryn Manning
Aux News Britney Spears
At long last, Britney Spears has finally waded into the Method acting discourse. Okay, okay. We know. You probably never want to hear that phrase again, post Jeremy Strong and his “monastic chic” (not to mention, you know, all the other stuff). Still, it seems like Spears actually has a healthier relationship with the whole thing than many other actors who’ve dabbled in the practice.
In her upcoming tell-all memoir The Woman In Me, Spears is set to cover all the obvious major topics, but also spares some room for her 2002 box office flop/cult classic Crossroads, which also stars Zoe Saldaña and Taryn Manning as three childhood friends who reunite on a road trip.
“The experience wasn’t easy for me. My problem wasn’t with anyone involved in the production but with what acting did to my mind,” she writes in a preview excerpt from People. “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.”
As a result, Spears started walking and talking differently, she writes, which made her feel like “someone else for months.” The experience was so destabilizing, in fact, that she was “relieved” when it proved to be “the beginning and end of my acting career.”
“The Notebook casting came down to me and Rachel McAdams,” she continued, and while she says it would have been “fun to reconnect with Ryan Gosling after our time on the Mickey Mouse Club,” she’s ultimately “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.”
“I imagine there are people in the acting field who have dealt with something like that, where they had trouble separating themselves from a character,” she concluded. “I hope I never get close to that occupational hazard again. 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 Woman In Me comes out October 24.
27 Comments
There is zero chance Britney Spears actually wrote (or even said) those words, just sayin. I love her, but erudite she ain’t. Do they make no effort to match ghostwriters with their subjects as far as authorial voice?
I mean, if they tried to emulate her own written “voice” it would be completely unreadable. I’ve tried parsing out her Instagram post captions, and “meandering” doesn’t even begin to describe them.
Having read the Insta posts of hers that get reprinted here on AVC, all i can do is thank the gods that her ghostwriter didn’t try to write in Britney’s voice.
I think there’s also zero chance that post-Crossroads anyone considered her for the Notebook.
She calls that acting?
Method acting? More like meth-head acting!
Maybe she needs to go to the MethadOne clinic for methad acting.
Considering the similarity between the titles ‘The Woman in Me’ and ‘The Man Inside Me’, I could well believe she and Tobias did some brainstorming sessions together at the clinic.
1. I’d always thought her character in Crossroads was basically a fictionalized version of someone she wanted to be or represent, anyway.2. I didn’t realize the friends Britney journeyed with were Pennsatucky and Gamora.
The only thing I knew about that movie was that Anson Mount was in it, and I only learned that recently.
He what
I didn’t realize he was an Amell brother too!
I mean she’d been told from an early age who she was supposed to be, so it makes sense she’d find herself doing this.
To this day, Crossroads remains the worst movie I’ve ever seen.
Yeah yeah, Glitter is more incompetent, but Crossroads is hateful. It’s the rare film that is somehow sexist against both men and women.
Thank God we had less non-binary or transgender awareness back then, because I’m sure the filmmakers would’ve shat all over them too if given the opportunity.
I have no idea if it holds true (because I’ve never actually seen Crossroads), but I remember saying it looks like a newer version of “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar” but with uglier women.
This is like the least interesting thing to have come out about what’s in this book. I mean she says Justin Timberlake pressured her to get an abortion.
This just sounds like ghostwritten gibberish based on a sentence fragment from an interview.
She sold her soul to the devil at the crossroads to get good at music… all for a film role? Toxic came out the following year, which is the only Britney Spears song that’s kind of interesting, so I guess that tracks…
I’m pretty sure her music career came before her acting career.
In acting it’s called “bleed”.
“The Notebook casting came down to me and Rachel McAdams,” she continued”Yeah fucking right, it did. Someone saw her performance in Crossroads and said ‘yeah, almost as good as Rachel McAdams’? I’m sure that’s what some producer TOLD her.
My Christ, imagine what a shitshow the Notebook starring Brit would’ve been.
Is there any actual chance that the casting for the female lead for The Notebook actually came down to just her or McAdams? I don’t doubt that she auditioned but trying to picture them picking between those two options sounds like an SNL sketch.
bwahahahaha. Yeah, I bumped up against that. Was every other age-appropriate actress in Hollywood busy that week?
This is quite bizarre considering she essentially played Britney Spears in that movie.