CHANNING Tatum stars alongside Rachel McAdams in the new romantic drama, The Vow.

The movie follows the story of how a husband tries to win the heart of his wife, who suffers from memory loss after a car crash.

“I thought that it was a pretty unique story… It’s an out-and-out love story and i think it’s done in as honest a way as you can possibly do it,” said Tatum, 32, of the movie in interviews.

 The actor had some reservations about taking on the role in the beginning, though, because he didn’t know who would be playing his love interest. “I knew we had to have someone who was just innately lovable, for it to work. That you’d just love to love her,” he said.

And who could be more loveable than Rachel McAdams? The movie is inspired by the real life story of Kim and Krickitt Carpenter. The Carpenters were involved in a car crash in November 1993; both were badly injured, but only Krickitt suffered a memory loss. She had no recollection of what happened in her life more than a year back, which also included her marriage to Kim.

Channing Tatum and Rachel McAdams star in The Vow.

Krickitt never regained her memory. The Vow is loosely based on the Carpenters’ recovery, on how they stuck it through the years by starting fresh. Tatum spoke to the couple while the movie was being shot.

“Michael Sucsy (the director) really went and wrote his own movie. The circumstances really happened, but everything else was made up. So I didn’t really feel the need to go and ask a bunch of questions. I kind of wanted to be able to create a different character and not try to be him,” the actor explained.

 The Vow is just the first out of six films that Tatum stars in this year. Others include Haywire, 21 Jump Street, Magic Mike, Ten Year Reunion and the much-anticipated sequel to the action flick, G.I. Joe. With all that happening you’d think he’d have no time for leisure, and you’d be right.

Apart from acting, he is also getting into developing and producing films. But he said that he does love spending time with his family – he married actress Jenna Dewan, his co-star in the movie Step Up, in 2009 – and if he did have time for himself, he’d like to sit down and sculpt, draw, or play music. Formerly a model, Tatum never really had any formal training in acting.

However, so far he has managed to do quite well, even though he says that he is just only starting to truly understand how to bring more of himself into his work. “It’s like working without a net. You fall down hard when you don’t do something right,” he noted. — Compiled by Saw Jhu Vern