‘A Walk To Remember’: Shane West Says He and Mandy Moore Had an ‘Opposites Attract’ Energy
Shane West and Mandy Moore met when they starred in the 2002 film A Walk To Remember. Based on a Nicholas Sparks novel of the same name, the movie focuses on the love story between two high schoolers, Landon Carter (West) and Jamie Sullivan (Moore).
Years after the movie premiered, Moore admitted she “fell in love” with West during filming. West agreed with Moore’s sentiment, and acknowledged that the two had an “opposites attract” energy when they first met.
Mandy Moore ‘fell in love’ while filming ‘A Walk To Remember’
A Walk To Remember premiered on Jan. 25, 2002. To celebrate the film’s 15th anniversary, Entertainment Weekly conducted a special interview with West and Moore in 2017. In the interview, Moore admitted she developed feelings for West.
“Shane was so cool. Everything about him – the way he dressed, the little cigarettes that he smoked, and the music he listened to. He was the character to me and there was definitely a part of me that absolutely fell in love with him,” Moore told Entertainment Weekly.
When the two actors first met, Moore was only 16 years old. She turned 17 years old while filming A Walk To Remember, and looking back she knows her young age was part of the reason she became infatuated with West.
“I don’t know if I could discern the difference between him and the character at that point in time because, again, it was my first experience doing anything like this and I was a 16-year-old, impressionable girl,” she said. “I was just so caught up in the moment and the experience.”
Shane West agrees that he and Mandy Moore ‘fell in love’
West appeared in a BUILD interview in 2019, and the focus of the interview was West’s role in A Walk To Remember. One fan of the movie submitted a question over Twitter and asked West about his reaction to Moore’s love confession.
While West could not remember his exact reaction, he did affirm that he and Moore supported each other.
“I do know that we absolutely fell in love with each other as human beings and in people,” he said. “I think that is kind of what helped make the relationship and the chemistry work in that film.”
The ‘A Walk To Remember’ actors had an ‘opposites attract’ energy
In A Walk To Remember, Landon is a popular student with many friends while Jamie is known for being a devout Christian. While they have very different views of the world, Jamie and Landon strike up a friendship that grows into a romance.
A Walk To Remember was Moore’s first starring role in a movie. Before breaking into acting, Moore was primarily known as a pop singer. West was a well-known actor and he also played in a punk rock band called Jonny Was.
“She didn’t know about any music that I knew, and I didn’t care about any music that she liked,” West said during the BUILD interview. “It was just like opposites attract, I guess. I don’t even know if we liked each other day one, but it quickly changed day two, and it just kind of grew from that.”
