One Day is a book that makes people ruminate over lost loves, grow hopelessly nostalgic for the boundless opportunities of youth, and weep softly around the pool when they finish reading it on holiday. In fact, it’s such a phenomenon that we’ve seen as many burly men avidly reading its pages on the Tube as we have women.

By all accounts, it is not something you want to mess with — so it’s a brave man who attempts to turn such a national treasure into a film. Thankfully, that man is also the book’s author, David Nicholls. And, doubly thankfully, the man who’s cast to play Dexter, the Nineties’ lad-culture TV presenter who descends into ruination, is 33-year-old Jim Sturgess, one of the big hopes of the British acting firmament.

Not only does he possess the indie looks that could easily have seen him on the cover of The Face in 1994 (had he not been studying for his GCSEs), but he also has the acting prowess to deliver. This is the man who broke out with 2007’s Across The Universe, who headed up cult British horror Heartless in 2009, who starred with Colin Farrell in 2010’s The Way Back. He can handle the pressure. Just you watch.

People are passionate about this book. Have you Googled yourself to check the ever-fickle public are convinced you’re the man for the job?

[Laughs] I haven’t specifically looked but I have seen some comments. One of them said, “Why do they always cast American actors in these British films? Jim Sturgess’s British accent is terrible.” That was my favourite.

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Last night was the UK/European premiere for One Day, and I have just added 78 HQ and MQ photos from the event – as ever, Jim and Anne looked like they were having a great time! The film is now out in the UK, so make sure you see it!

Playing the role of Dexter in “One Day,” a film directed by Lone Scherfig, Jim Sturgess shared the screen with Anne Hathaway who played Emma, his best friend of two decades. Based on the book by David Nicholls, who also wrote the screenplay, the film revisits the friends on every July 15, starting on their graduation day from college.

As the rain came down in sheets outside the Waldorf Astoria Towers, Sturgess sunk into a flowery couch in his suite. Two carts of room service food had been left by the door, carefully monitored by his host of agents. Speakeasy talked with a surprisingly antsy Sturgess as he adjusted and readjusted his skinny tie.

David Nicholls book is beloved by American and British audiences. Were you nervous about being the living, breathing Dexter?

I wasn’t at the beginning at all because I hadn’t heard of the book. I read the screenplay first and met with Lone [Scherfig]. I responded to it; it was a good script. That alone, I was interested. Then I was away, I was filming somewhere else and that’s when I read the book. So I wasn’t around the madness behind the book in England. Then we made the film and since making the film my radar is much more open. I just see it everywhere now. Every time I sit on a train five people are reading it. And in England the book is bright orange and at night it almost illuminates the streets of London. It’s everywhere. So now I’m starting to think “oh my god, what have I done.”

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Jim’s had a busy few weeks with the promotional tour for One Day, and the reviews of the film and flying in! I’ve started to round up the videos from his various TV appearances and magazine interviews, check the first few out here and the rest beneath the cut: