Anne Hathaway, Jim Sturgess trace their paths to 'One Day'

In the romantic drama “One Day,” which opens Friday, Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess play two people who have absolutely nothing in common, except that they’re best friends. Hathaway’s Emma is a frumpy, self-deprecating dreamer, who whiles away her time hoping to become a great writer. Sturgess’ Dexter is a full-of-himself, kind of caddish fellow who cruises through life without thinking about the future.

The film, based on the bestselling novel by David Nicholls, traces their histories, checking in on what’s going on with them, alone and together, on the same July date over a period of 20 years. The story, naturally, gets around to how similar, not how different, they are.

In real life, the two actors – she’s 29, he’s a baby-faced 33 – had never met before making the film and, unlike Emma and Dexter, they do share at least a facet of something in common: a certain Shakespeare play.

Before making “One Day,” Sturgess starred in a fantasy film called “Upside Down” that’s scheduled for release early next year.

“It’s about these two worlds. One’s called Down Below, and one’s called Up Top,” he said earlier this week in a New York hotel room. “My character is from the Down Below world, which is a kind of poverty-stricken, almost Communist-ruled landscape. And he’s basically fallen in love with this girl from Up Top. But the two worlds don’t mix. It’s like ‘Romeo and Juliet’ but family’s not getting in the way. In this film it’s gravity, which is kind of an interesting concept.”

Later in the day, Hathaway was wrapped up in thinking about the roles that have eluded her.

“Unfortunately I think I’ve just crossed the too-old mark for the part I’ve always wanted to play,” she said, frowning. “I’ve always wanted to be Juliet, but maybe I can find like a 40-year-old Romeo. I was talking with someone the other day and they were trying to tell me that Juliet wasn’t actually a great part, that it was fairly obvious and surfacy, and I just let him have it. I said, ‘What are you talking about? It’s a story about a girl, and her heart opening, and she’s as passionate as ‘Joan of Arc.’ That’s another one! Oh God! All the classics! It would be so much fun, all the fun Shakespearean ones.”

But both actors were in town to do their part in talking up “One Day.”

Hathaway said she read the script before reading the novel.

“It was in December 2009,” she remembered. “I had just wrapped ‘Love And Other Drugs’ and had a two-week panic that I was never going to work again. Then I got sent ‘One Day’ and then it became a full-frontal assault to get the part.”

Asked what attracted her to it, she said, “Emma was the most honest, complex, beautifully drawn character I’d found since ‘Rachel Getting Married.’ And I try not to leave any stone unturned until I get the opportunity. The problem is when you get the opportunity and you’re like, ‘Oh, I’ve got it! Oh, God, what am I going to do with it?’ Then it becomes a whole other set of emotions that you have to deal with.”

Sturgess, on the other hand, didn’t go running after the part. It was pretty much casually offered to him.

“I was sent the script as, I think, a lot of people in England were,” he said. “I read it and then went in for an audition with Lone (Scherfig, the director), in London. We talked about the project and the character, then I did some reading with a casting agent. I didn’t hear anything about it for a while, then I got a phone call asking if I would fly to Los Angeles to meet with Anne, to do some more reading. So I did that, then I got the part.”

Sturgess went quiet for a moment, then added, “It was weird. I was about three-quarters of the way through the book, just enjoying the read, like anybody else. I was really immersed in the story, then suddenly I got the call saying I got the part, and it just totally ruined the last quarter of the book for me. I said, ‘Oh, God, now I guess I’m going to be this guy.’”

Sturgess admitted that he knows “a load of people like Dexter. Living in London, you see a lot of those people hanging around swanky bars in Soho. I was very aware of the type of person he was, from a sort of over-privileged background … those guys that swung around in expensive bars and posh restaurants. So I was excited to play someone that, at first, I didn’t particularly like, but then sort of got to look into his life. I found myself defending him to all the girls who were working on the crew that just hated him. I was like, ‘He’s all right; he’s a good person.’”

Each actor has a different approach, or at least attitude, toward the craft.

“I’ve tried my hardest with the opportunities or whatever’s on offer to do something different every time,” said Sturgess. “So after doing a musical (‘Across the Universe’), I did a sort of period film (‘The Other Boleyn Girl’) and then I did a sort of slick Hollywood film (‘21’) and then a slightly darker thriller (‘50 Dead Men Walking’), then a sort a war epic (‘The Way Back’), and then ‘Upside Down.’ Now there’s this romance film. I didn’t think I wanted to do a romance film, but then I read the script, and it was just so good and so ungeneric. It had something really special and different.

“It’s been amazing working with lots of different directors,” he added. “You really just kind of learn and learn and learn, and I guess your confidence grows, the more people you work with.”

Hathaway was asked what she meant by saying she thought she was never going to work again after “Love and Other Drugs.”

“Every actor feels that,” she said. “We’re all a mixture of arrogance and insecurity. Worry comes with the territory of being an actor. You don’t come into this profession for the job security. I’m playing at a pretty high level now, and there’s a lot of things beyond your control. You can be doing fine work and people just decide they’re bored with you. And then all of a sudden you don’t get the opportunity to do things. So it makes you appreciate the things that you have because it’s so nice to have a script like this and a character like this and, oh my gosh, this is what I get to pour myself into! And the older I get, the more I appreciate these opportunities, because I assume they’re going to become increasingly rare. So you just try to live in the middle of every moment.”