With their director on board, the filmmakers set out to cast the young leads - the characters of Jamie Sullivan and Landon Carter - whose love is the heart of the film.
I wanted young actors with whom teenagers could connect," Shankman explains. I wanted to make them real because they're not playing archetypal kids here — they're playing fully developed, multi-dimensional individuals who are flawed. One of the interesting elements in this film is that the best characters as well as the worst characters are all flawed. There is no perfection."
Shane West was the filmmakers' ideal choice for Landon Carter. Shankman was looking for someone who could evolve from very dark to very light and yet maintain his personal charisma throughout. He wanted an actor that guys could feel comfortable with. Also, it had to be someone new and fresh, someone the audience doesn't already think they know.
A working actor since his early teens, West recently appeared in the feature romantic comedy "Get Over It," and is a series regular on "Once and Again." Like his co-star Mandy Moore, he also has a musical background, currently fronting the Los Angeles-based pop-punk band Average Jo.
I was reading a teen magazine," says Shankman, "because I read 850 teen magazines when I got this job so I could become familiar with the rising talent out there, and on the cover of one of them was Mandy Moore interviewing the top five guys she thought were Hollywood's most interesting. And Shane was one of them. I arranged to meet him for lunch and as we talked, I thought, 'holy moley. this is gold!' He is not only a fine actor, but he has this great gravelly and wonderful voice and there is so much going on in his eyes.
It was just sort of an instinct that I had about him," Shankman continues, "but once he got to the set, he proved to be a miracle. I couldn't have asked for a better Landon. He's in practically every scene of the movie, having to be either incredibly angry and self-hating or madly in love and heroic — sometimes in the course of a day."
West agrees that the role of Landon suited him, although he was initially unfamiliar with the story. 'I don't generally read love stories," he admits, "but after reading the screenplay, I knew I couldn't wait to read the book so I could truly understand Nicholas Sparks' story and how he envisioned the character of Landon. It's a beautiful story and the characters are very believable, which is what attracted me to the project.
"There is some of Landon in me," West confides. "My parents divorced when I was four and I lived with my mom. I love her very much, but, like Landon, I had some family problems and like many teenagers, I was aloof. I could really relate to a lot of the situations in the film."
As for the group that makes up Landon's popular clique at Beaufort High, West has them figured out too. "They have a small-minded mentality that can't see beyond their own tight group," he says. "They are the type of people who live in a small town and dream about getting out but don't have the confidence to do it. They see Landon as a threat because he's willing to go beyond his social circle and take a true risk."
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