In Seabrook, North Carolina in the 1940s, teenaged debutante Allie Hamilton (Rachel McAdams) and local boy Noah Calhoun (Ryan Gosling) spend one passionate, carefree summer together and deeply in love. But when the summer ends, war and duty separate the young couple.
Today, an elderly man (James Garner) visits a nursing home to read from his notebook to a woman (the late, great Gena Rowlands) whose memory is fading. As he spins a tale of two young lovers with their whole lives before them, his beloved Allie relives a long-ago passion that has never died, an unbreakable bond between two ordinary people rendered extraordinary by the strength, power and beauty of true love.
A swoon-worthy romantic weepie, based on the beloved novel by Nicholas Sparks, this decades-spanning historical love story from director Nick Cassavetes sent the careers of its young star-crossed lovers, Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, into the Hollywood stratosphere.