'Dear John'

Actors hope film inspires audiences to 'find love or keep love'

Not every love story needs to be a saga, like "Dr. Zhivago." Sometimes the simplest stories make the best movies, and Nicholas Sparks has made a mint feeding a public ravenous for romance.

First love, as depicted in "Dear John," is especially poignant.

"I'm very drawn to a story of that first love one has," says Channing Tatum ("G.I. Joe"), who stars opposite leading lady Amanda Seyfried in Lasse Hallstrom's adaptation of Sparks' 2006 novel. "At that age, you have no idea what love is, what a relationship is, what you have to do to be in one. And there's no way for it to work out perfectly.

"The characters Amanda and I play have no idea what's coming down the road, but it's going to be a hard one to travel. As an actor, you have to put yourself in that world and state of mind. Fortunately, Nicholas Sparks is the best at this kind of story."

Filmed partly in Charleston, the film debuts nationally Feb. 5.

"Dear John" pivots on the star-crossed encounter of John Tyree (Tatum), a young soldier home on leave from the Iraq War, and Savannah Curtis (Seyfried), an idealistic college student he falls for during her spring vacation. Over the course of the next seven years, the couple are separated by his increasingly hazardous deployments. While meeting only sporadically, they stay in touch by sending a continuous stream of love letters overseas, correspondence that eventually triggers fateful consequences.

Written for the screen by Jamie Linden ("We Are Marshall") and co-starring 2009 Oscar nominee Richard Jenkins, the film is the latest foray into the human heart by Hallstrom ("Chocolat," "The Cider House Rules"), last seen in these parts helming the 1995 Julia Roberts comedy "Something to Talk About."

But a love story is all about the chemistry between the leads.

"Chan and I got along so well because we both have the same kind of mentality on set: have as much fun as you can before you have to go into the serious mode," says Seyfried, who earlier wowed audiences in "Mean Girls" and "Mamma Mia!" "We wanted to make it come alive, and it was this chemistry that helped. We were all on the same page with our method of work.

"Neither Chan or I take anything too seriously, and that's a perfect co-star."

If there is some mystical connection between acting in "Mean Girls" and winning the female lead in a Sparks adaptation -- her "Mean Girls" co-star, Rachel McAdams, also toplined (the Charleston shoot of) "The Notebook" -- Seyfried isn't aware of it. She's just relieved to have sidestepped typecasting as the ditzy blonde she played in "MG" and to discover she was more than capable of playing a romantic lead.

"I got a lot of auditions for ditzy blondes after that," she recalls. "But the fact is that you don't want to get stuck in any kind of role. And it was obvious I needed to take a different path."

That path was the drama "Nine Lives" (2005), which preceded what Seyfried terms her career-turning point in 2008's "Mamma Mia!"

"I wasn't sure I was ready to do a romantic lead, but I knew I wanted to try. I've been inspired by romances all my life, which is part of the reason I'm here today, doing what I'm doing."

For Tatum, playing Tyree was a matter of believability.

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