Photo Credit: Giles Keyte © 2011 Focus Features

By: Debra Wallace

If anyone seems poised to be crowned the princess of romantic comedy, it's Anne Hathaway. With those soulful chocolate eyes and a heart-melting smile, she certainly looks the romantic part. The funny part, she is not above a pratfall or the ability to laugh at herself - witness The Princess Diaries and Ella Enchanted.

Of course, no one in Hollywood can wait to see what she does with the deliciously campy Catwoman character in the upcoming Batman: The Dark Knight Rises.

In her latest romantic comedy venture, Focus Features One Day, which opens Aug. 19, she strikes the perfect chord of vulnerability, longing and humor. Anyone who has ever fallen in and out of love with a cad - who also happens to have a heart - will relate to Hathaway's struggling writer, Emma Morley.

On July 15, 1988 (St. Swithin's Day), Emma's life is changed forever by a chance meeting with arrogant yet lovable Dexter Mayhew (Jim Sturgess). Over the span of 20 years, these two engage in the kind of love-hate, push-me-pull-you epic that serves up thoughtful lessons about love, loss, regret, and seizing the day.

"Personally, I love a romantic comedy. When they're good, I think there's nothing better," says Hathaway, 28, as she enters a posh Manhattan hotel room with old-Hollywood movie-star glamour. "I love to have my heart challenged, and ripped out and woken up in unexpected ways."

Looking slim and toned for her current Catwoman role and wearing her raven hair in a tousled bun on top of her head, is was crystal clear on a rainy day in Manhattan that she is a quiet powerhouse. Hathaway was friendly, upbeat, thoughtful, honest, excited, passionate and ready to talk and sip a mug of black coffee. She looked classy, chic, and comfy, in a clingy, beige silk summer sweater and short black mini skirt.

Q: Your leading guy in the movie One Day, Jim Sturgess, says he's not big on romance in movies.

Anne Hathaway: No, he's not! And there were some great moments with him in the movie, but then he was... back to being a jerk! But I never got bummed. I just looked at it as a challenge.

Q: You've played a lot of romantic characters - do you think men and women can be friends without the so-called benefits of sex?

AH: I'm not the person to ask this question because I've been in a rock solid relationship [with Adam Shulman] for three years, and I'm a one man woman, so I don't really look at other men that way, I'm terribly boring and loyal and true blue and all that.

Q: I know you also have a lot of gay, male friends; will you please talk about that, too?

AH: I have straight male friends, too, but the majority of my friends are gay men, and I've never had any sexual tension with them, which I consider to be a personal failing. [she joked]. But I think it is possible, if you are a straight woman to be friends with a straight guy and vice versa, and sometimes there is tension that needn't get in the way of friendship, usually that dissipates into what it was meant to be, which is the friendship.

Photo Credit: Giles Keyte © 2011 Focus Features

Q: When did you first read the novel One Day?

AH: I read the novel after I read the script, which was December 2009. I wrapped the movie Love & Other Drugs, had a two week panic that I was never going to work again, and then I got the script for One Day, and then it became a full frontal assault to get the part.

Q: So what did you do?

AH: I read it December 17th, and by January 2nd I had gotten myself to London and I was sitting at a club in London with [the director] Lone Scherfig, trying to explain to her why I ought to play Emma Morley and failing miserably. It was the worst meeting I had ever had. So, in desperation I wrote down a bunch of song titles, for her as a way to say, 'This is where I think that Emma and I overlap,' and I communicated through other people's music.

Q: What songs did you give the director?

AH: Definitely Bon Iver. That album For Emma Forever Ago, just that feeling of heartache. The song Crown of Love, the scene where Emma breaks up with Dex as a friend, I was just listening to that song again, and again and again. That song just sends me into a tailspin. The song that captures Dex and Emma in their younger life is the song Knotty Pine - "Like pinewood we are tied together, two whole lengths of knotty pine, with a couple of nails put right on through." I am paraphrasing.

Q: So wait a minute, are you are saying with all of your movie success you still have to do a selling job on yourself?

AH: Oh, yeah.

Q: You sound so assured of yourself as a woman and an actress, but you say you may never work again after Love & Other Drugs? That doesn't make sense.

AH: Every actor feels that way - we're all a mixture of arrogance and insecurity. I'm actually not a terribly confident person; I'm just very professional. I don't think it's fake; it's professional.

Q: Do you worry when one acting role ends about the next work that will come your way?

AH: You don't come into this profession for the job security. There are a lot of things at all times beyond your control and I'm playing at a pretty high level now and there's a lot beyond your control. You can be doing fine work and people just decide their bored of you and then you don't get the opportunity to do things. So it makes you appreciate the things that you have. It's so nice a script like this, and a character like this, and its concrete, and it's something I get to pour myself into it.

Q: You still had other options on your plate, so why did you go after this movie?

AH: It's a really wonderful thing to find a character that's honest and complex and beautifully drawn, and Emma was the most honest, complex and beautifully drawn character that I had found since Kim in Rachel Getting Married, and I shot that in the fall of 2007. So clearly there's some time in between. And when you find something like this I try to leave any stone unturned until I am given the opportunity.

Q: Is that a relief at that point?

AH: No, the problem is that then you get the opportunity and you shout 'I got it!' and the next thing worry 'Oh, God, what am I going to do with it?' and then it becomes a whole other set of emotions that you have to deal with.

Photo Credit: Giles Keyte © 2011 Focus Features

Q: There is so much chemistry between Dexter and Emma, but then there are so many impediments to them getting together. Can you please talk about that? Some of us romantics would want them to get together much earlier in the film and novel.

AH: I don't think that Emma and Dexter could have gotten together a day before they do. I think they both had so much life to live, and so many realizations they had to come to, before they could be together honestly and openly. I think he needed to learn how to appreciate her, and she needed to learn how to appreciate herself. I think that was the most serious impediment.

Q: Tell me about the new Batman movie you are making - The Dark Knight Rises?

AH: I am having an absolute blast doing it, but it's very big. [The director] Chris [Nolan] is the most successful person is Hollywood at the moment but his movies feel like you are making an indie film. He's really an alternative filmmaker. He just happens to have a mega-billion dollar budget. I like to call him Hitchcock, but he blows things up.

Q: What was the audition process like?

AH: Chris met with a bunch of girls. Then he culled the list down three and a half months later to do screen tests. So everyone with XX chromosomes in Hollywood was sitting on pins and needles for three and a half months!

Q: Then I assume that you wait...

AH: Yes. And I never want to get my hopes up too high. But I was back in Brooklyn, and my manager called me. And what I heard on the other end of phone was 'meow.' And I thought she was joking, but she said it was true! So I celebrated big time. It was one of my best days.