During a virtual screen talk at the 64th BFI London Film Festival in October 2020, George Clooney revealed that he was in talks to play Noah Calhoun in "The Notebook" alongside Paul Newman, who was set to play the older version of Noah. "We were going to do "The Notebook" together," Clooney said of Newman. "Basically, I was going to play him as a young man, and it was funny. We met and said, 'This is it. It's going to be great.'"
However, Clooney apparently changed his mind about the project after watching Newman's films. "He's one of the handsomest guys you've ever seen," he continued. "We met up and I said, 'I can't play you. I don't look anything like you. This is insane.' We just wanted to do it because we wanted to work together, [but] it ended up being not the right thing for us to do." Ryan Gosling went on to play Noah, with James Garner playing the older version.