Steve Pratt talks to the stars of romantic comedy Walking On Sunshine about talent shows, famous siblings and being starstruck on set

X FACTOR winner and now movie star Leona Lewis is telling co-star Hannah Arterton about seeing herself on screen. “My boyfriend is German and he saw the trailer in German,” she says laughing – because it was dubbed into German.

Arterton joins in the laughter. “I would love to see that. I would really love to see that. If you get the link send it to me,” she adds.

Both make their feature film debuts in Walking On Sunshine, a jukebox musical featuring hits of the 1980s and a story of sisters romancing the same handsome Italian. It’s corny and cliched but the sun-drenched Italian scenery is gorgeous and the cast look pretty good too.

The words “feelgood” and Mamma Mia (which could have been the template for the new movie) are bandied abut a lot. “It’s just so entertaining and fun, “ says Arterton of a soundtrack that includes Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Wake Me Up Before You Go Go and Don’t You Want Me Baby.

“The songs they picked were really fitting and just fun. Everyone knows all the lyrics to all the songs so that’s going to make it a really good film to go and see,” says Lewis.

Arterton says the most fun to film was Wake Me Up Before You Go Go. “It was 30 dancers and the sun setting and they built this stage that went into the sea. It was just nuts,” she says.

For Lewis, the film’s release comes after she left mentor Simon Cowell for a new record label. There were reports that he had ditched her but the switch was her decision. They’re still friends. “I’m having dinner with him soon. I haven’t met the baby yet. So cute. It’s definitely changed him and I’m so happy for him,” she says.

X Factors winners, even one as successful of Lewis, come under a lot of media scrutiny, something with which she’s come to terms. “I try not to get weighed down by the pressures of people saying this, like when I hadn’t made an album for a year and people said, ‘Gosh, she’s disappeared’,”

she says.

“I try not to give in to speculation or read about what people are saying and just let the music speak for itself.”

Music is what she wants to focus on now. “I’ve been getting in the studio and really coming up with some exciting material and have a lot to write about what I’ve been going through this year. I’m excited where it’s going,” she says. “I don’t have a direction in my head, ‘Oh I want to do this, I want to do that’. It’s kind of whatever I make in the studio.”

Filming Walking On Sunshine wasn’t that different to making music videos but is different to singing live in a concert. “On film you get the director shouting ‘cut’ and have to stop. A show is fluid and changes with how you feel,” she adds.

Rising star Hannah Arterton, younger sister of Bond girl Gemma Arterton, has sung onstage and with bands but being in a movie musical was a dream come true. “You can’t imagine the amount of times I’ve stood in front of the mirror with a hairbrush pretending to sing,” she says.

“I was kind of on the outskirts of the music business for a while. But it didn’t work out so I went down the acting route. I’ve been singing live with bands for over ten years but singing to a backing track with a camera was a new thing.”

She was starstruck when she first met Lewis.

“We got off the flight and I thought she’s so cool. I wanted to go up and say, ‘Hello, I’m Hannah and in the film with you’ but I was really nervous. It seems weird now but I was completely starstruck,” she recalls.

The feeling was mutual, as Lewis explains. “I was starstruck by everyone. I was just scared because they were real actors and I was just pretending.”

She’d had movie offers before but hadn’t had the time to devote to those projects because of singing and recording commitments. The best friend’s role in Walking On Sunshine was a “nice fit”, she says.

She has been heard on film before – on James Cameron’s blockbuster Avatar singing the theme song I See You. But probably her most amazing “gig” was performing with guitarist Jimmy Page at the closing ceremony at the Beijing Olympics.

“That’s the most people I’ve ever been watched by.

It was like a billion or something people tuned in,”

she says.

In Walking On Sunshine, Lewis plays the best friend of Hannah’s character Taylor, who arrives in Italy to discover that sister Maddie (played by Annabel Scholey) is to marry one of her former holiday boyfriends.

Hannah says she and Gemma are on much friendlier terms than the sisters on screen. “We’re best mates really. We speak all the time and share the same interests and passions. Maddie and Taylor are fighting each other. They’re very opposite, battling to find a middle ground where they can understand each other. So our relationship is much more peaceful.”

Because they look different, they don’t find themselves being considered for the same roles.

“And we are at completely different stages of our career. But put that aside and I think I’m much more girl next door and she’s like a fox,” she says.

Seeing Gemma as a Bond girl – Strawberry Fields in Quantum Of Solace – was an inspiration.

“I was amazed that someone who grew up on a council estate could, five years later, be the lead in a Hollywood movie.

“That to me is just so inspiring and made me think that anything is possible if you work hard enough and are nice to people then you can really get somewhere.

“You don’t have to be limited by where you grew up or what your parents do for a living.”

  • Walking On Sunshine (12A) opens in cinemas on June 27.