It's normal not to forget your first love...and Allie Hamilton's second.
Fans are well aware of the saga of Rachel McAdams' character in The Notebook, the beloved 2004 drama that quickly became one of the world's most beloved romances: girl meets boy, girl and boy fall in love, girl and boy are unknowingly kept apart by her mom, girl falls in love with new boy, girl finds old boy again, girl must choose. More than a decade later, most know she ended up picking Ryan Gosling's Noah Calhoun, her teenage love, instead of James Marsden's "fabulously wealthy" Lon Hammond, Jr.
While the fictional pair have been melting hearts ever since, Marsden caught flack for his character. "I thought he was a good guy," he said on Good Morning America Thursday after Michael Strahan defended the less favored gentleman. "But, I think it's a testament to the movie that the chemistry between Ryan and Rachel, it was, you know..."
The chemistry was so good, it seems some people forgot it was just a movie.
"When the movie became such a phenomenon, people would come up to me on the street and be like, 'Why were you trying to get in their way?! They were supposed to be together,'" Marsden recalled.
"It was like, 'Ahh, I didn't do anything,'" Marsden responded. "'It was a job. I don't know.'"
After all, people didn't expect it to become the phenomenon that it did.
"Nobody knew that that was going to be such a massive hit," Marsden said. "You never know when you're filming."
"You hope that it's gonna happen, but that one I don't think anyone saw it coming," he continued. "Pretty special thing to be a part of."