Just another love story?

It's not your average "romdram", or so reckons leading man Jim Sturgess, who hadn't heard anything about the novel before reading the film script. The One Daystar talks to TARA BRADY

I T SEEMED TO happen with all the menacing stealth of a Bodysnatchers invasion. One day, you suddenly look up and see only, well, One Day.

Like most of us, actor Jim Sturgess can’t quite date the phenomenon.

“I didn’t know anything about the book at all. I read the script before I’d heard of it,” says Sturgess. “It was only afterwards, when we had finished shooting, that I realised that every time I walked through the park or looked up on the train I was surrounded by it. That orange cover is pretty distinctive. And it’s everywhere.”

He reckons his ignorance was probably just as well. "All I could think was 'Shit, this thing is really popular'." He's right to fear the wrath of irate bookloving commuters. For the faithful, David Nicholls' 2009 bestseller is the defining romance of the 21st century. A halting love story between two 1980s archetypes – he's a wide-boy yuppie, she's Millie Tant lite – One Day's two-decade time frame and structural similarities to When Harry Met Sallyensured a swift transition to the big screen.

It’s a bit different from your average rom-dram, says its star. “I liked it because it’s a really great love story that dares to go a bit darker, that isn’t afraid of some of the harder life issues. I liked my character because he’s not a typical romantic hero, he’s not this great guy. He’s an upper class, over-privileged, spoiled brat. I remember looking at my myself in the mirror – leather trousers, silk shirt open around the neck – and thinking, well, this is something.”

The finished film, starring Sturgess and Oscar starlet Anne Hathaway, hits multiplexes this week. An Education's Lone Scherfig directs. Jodie Whittaker, Romola Garai, Ken Stott and Patricia Clarkson occupy supporting roles. Expectations are understandably high.

"Tell me about it," says Sturgess. "I was at a barbeque recently and somebody asked me what I do. I told her I was an actor and that I had just done One Day. She asked me if I had a speaking part and I said 'Oh yeah, I'm playing Dexter' and her face just fell. I was not her Dexter.

“She was horrified. I looked down at the beer in my hand – I was not in best shape of my life – and muttered something about not looking this bad in the film.”

Today, the 30-year-old has stopped off in London for some quick interviews between One Day's New York premiere and pre-production duties on Cloud Atlas. What is it with him and blockbuster novels, anyway? "I know but it's very exciting," says Sturgess. "It's going to be directed by the Wachowskis [ The Matrix] and Tom Tykwer [ Run Lola Run].

“It’s really ambitious. I mean it’s the most ambitious thing I’ve ever seen. I’ve been hanging out with the Wachowskis and they’re so lovely and so intelligent and really humble. But looking at the scale of what they’re planning, you may never see me again.”

Born in Surrey in 1981, Sturgess trained in music and performance at the University of Salford. He was still in his teens when his one-man poetry show, Buzzin', brought him to the attention of various casting directors. He had amassed 10 years' worth of acting gigs in Brit flicks and telly shows before The Other Boleyn Girlsaw him sandwiched between Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson on the credit list. He has since shared a big screen with Harrison Ford, Laurence Fishburne, Colin Farrell and Bono.

“Whatever happens from here I’ve been in a room with Bono and The Edge playing guitars,” he says. “Can’t ask for much more than that.”

A cheerful, experimental soul, Sturgess has never said yes to a Hollywood blockbuster when there's a quirky or interesting work-for-scale picture in the running. Having scored an international box office number one with the card shark drama 21, the actor turned down the lead in Spiderman: Turn on the Darkto shoot 50 Dead Men Walkingin Belfast and Heartless, a low-budget London horror.

"I'd be rather be challenged," he says. "I love travelling to different places and finding new ways to tell a story. I lived in New York for a while after Across the Universe. I'm heading to Berlin now and can't wait.

“I’ve never thought seriously about moving to LA and doing the Hollywood thing. Hardly anything shoots in LA. It’s much better to have a base near your family and friends and your dog.”

His taste for the offbeat hasn't always translated into box-office gold. Julie Taymor's lavish Beatles musical, Across the Universe, made him a popular screensaver among hip American teens and tweens but failed to recoup its costs.

Last year, with similar bad luck, the actor teamed up with Colin Farrell, Saoirse Ronan and Ed Harris for Peter Weir's epic gulag adventure, The Way Back. Released as part of the pre-Oscar prestige season, the film was eclipsed by such big hitters as The Social Networkand The King's Speech. Sturgess, who learned how to survive in the wild for the gruelling shoot, must have felt a little miffed, surely?

"I was gutted for the film and the people involved," he says. "I can't complain. I had the experience of a lifetime. I was scrabbling around deserts and the mountains of Bulgaria. But there was that group of us constantly onscreen and constantly working. I knew the effort that had gone in. I watched the films on the Oscar shortlist and every single one of them was a brilliant film. I think The Way Backjust got a bit lost in that mad, short awards season. It takes so much money to promote those films the way they need to be promoted. You need to spend a fortune promoting the film for an audience and then you need to spend even more promoting the film for the Academy. It's hard."

Between movies, Sturgess is a veteran of Brit bands and musical combos. He and Mickey O’Brien, his girlfriend of eight years, are currently putting the finishing touches on some ambient grooves as part of their ongoing Tragic Toys side project. O’Brien, a keyboard player with the band La Roux, is the younger cousin of Radiohead member Ed O’Brien. Together the couple make “electro-cockney-gypsy-circus music”. They must be very popular with their Camden neighbours.

“We’re pretty quiet, honest,” promises Sturgess. “We’re always working with headphones and keyboards. So you can’t hear us. Except when the drum kit comes out. We try anyway.”

The actor has previously written songs for the movie Crossing Overand sang Scousefor Across the Universe. But if he had to choose between media, we suspect the movieverse will be the one to lose out.

“Music is so self-gratifying,” grins Sturgess. “With acting you really have to have a reason to do it. Sitting in your room and acting is a bit of a weird thing to do. And you can’t call your mates up and say ‘Do you want to come over and act together?’ I actually did that once and it was really fun. But it’s a lot easier getting people to come over and play guitar or keyboards. And there’s a lot of sitting around on a film set.

“A guitar is always a godsend.”

ACCENTS  of EVIL: the best  and worst

ANNE HATHAWAY'S Yorkshire accent in One Dayhas become a hot topic this week. Jim Sturgess, a London native, had no such concerns. But why would he? He's mastered the trickiest dialect of them all.

Here are some of the best and worst Irish accents. Be afraid...

The Best . . .

50 DEAD MEN WALKING

The Belfast sound is not to be undertaken lightly but young Sturgess even managed to put in cheeky, loud emphases in all the right places.

IN AMERICA

Samantha Morton and Paddy Considine

You know the way 1970s impressionists always made Terry Wogan’s middle-class Irish brogue sound like a leprechaun? Morton and Considine sound nothing like that.

IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER

Daniel Day Lewis

See also Daniel Day Lewis in My Left Foot,Daniel Day Lewis in The Boxer, basically anything with Daniel Day Lewis.

The Worst

MICHAEL COLLINS

Julia Roberts

Brad Pitt was brutal and Tom Cruise was not, as he might have suggested, a “corker” but only one A-lister makes Kitty O’Shea sound like Scarlett O’Hara.

THE UNTOUCHABLES and DARBY O’GILL AND THE LITTLE PEOPLE,

Sean Connery

Don’t you love it when Hollywood casts a Scot in an Irish role and thinks none of us Celts will know any different? Take a bow, Gerard Butler.

LEPRECHAUN PARTS 1-5

Warwick Davis

Crucially Warwick Davis is being stage Oirish on purpose. And crucially, it’s been bloody ages since Leprechaun 4: In Space and Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood. We’re waiting...