Britney Spears reveals why Crossroads put her off acting

The 2002 film was “pretty much the beginning and end of my acting career. And I was relieved actually.”

She’s going to throw it all away. Britney Spears releases her memoir, “The Woman in Me,” on October 24. People magazine publishes several extracts from the book in which the pop icon talks, among other things, about her quickly shortened acting career.

In 2002, then a chart megastar, she tried to move into cinema with Crossroads, a teen movie without ambition. “The experience was not easy for me.” tell Britney Spears. For what ? Because the singer had chosen to approach her first role in “Method Acting”, this Hollywood trend – essentially embodied by Daniel Day Lewis – which consists of putting oneself in the skin of the character and never leaving it, even off the set shooting.

“My problem with this film was not the people involved in the production, but how the acting made me feel,” writes Spears. “I think I started doing Method Acting. But I didn’t know how to get out of character. I really became this other person. Those who do Method Acting are generally aware that they are doing it. But I had no separation between me and my role. I ended up walking differently, behaving differently, talking differently. I was someone else for months while filming Crossroads. To this day, I bet the girls I made this movie with think this girl is a little…eccentric..”

As a result, Crossroads has been “pretty much the beginning and end of my acting career. And I was actually relieved.” Still a candidate for the role of Allie opposite Ryan Gosling in The Notebookshe happily gave up her place to Rachel McAdams:

“The casting of ‘The Notebook’ was between me and Rachel McAdams, and while it would have been fun to reconnect with Ryan Gosling after our time on ‘The Mickey Mouse Club,’ I’m glad we didn’t.” .If I had done that, instead of working on my album ‘In the Zone’, I would have behaved day and night like a 40s heiress!”

Britney Spears still found the cameras from time to time after that. Especially to play one’s own role in series, like in Will & Grace (2006) or Glee (2010) or Jane the Virgin (2015). She only played one other character after Crossroads. It was in How I Met Your Mother, where she played Abby, Ted Mosby’s love interest for a few episodes. The story does not say if the singer thought she was a medical secretary for months…