Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana as a couple repeatedly brought together in different times and places. Photo / Supplied Expand

Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana as a couple repeatedly brought together in different times and places. Photo / Supplied

Eric Bana turns up in random destinations, at different times in history, completely naked in his new movie The Time Traveler's Wife.

The 41-year-old Australian, best-known for his tough guy image, shows his sensitive side this time round, playing Henry, who is cursed with a genetic anomaly meaning he involuntarily jumps backwards and forwards in time.

Understandably he finds himself in some difficult situations as he's catapulted into various decades of his life - and the audience is required to take these giant leaps with him.

He falls in love with his future wife, Clare, (played by Rachel McAdams) whom he gets to know when she is 6 years old and he is 36. And although he has the ability to see into the future, he cannot change it. That's when things get complicated.

Based on the best-selling novel by Audrey Niffenegger and directed by Robert Schwentke (Flightplan) it's a weepie, over-the-top fantasy. However, what's more telling about where The Time Traveler's Wife fits is the fact the screenplay was written by Joel Rubin who wrote the Oscar-winning Ghost, the 1990 tale of fatal love starring Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore.

And who better to be the female lead than The Notebook's 31-year-old McAdams, who has worked in many other genres, but is best known as the heroine in tragic love stories.

In New York to promote the movie, McAdams and Bana are holed up in a hotel room together, with McAdams gushing about this much-loved book.

"I fell in love with it when I read it. I knew in the back of my mind that they were doing a movie at some point in time and so I just kind of waited. Just hoping," she laughs.

Whereas Bana, channelling his former life as a stand-up comedian, jokes, "Oh, I thought, why bother reading the book?"

Although he later admits he had to become familiar with the novel, especially relating to the aspects of fate and destiny.

"Fate has a lot to do with how we connect with people. You can't choose to meet a person. It just happens. Everyone in your life, other than your parents, comes to you out of fate. You form friendships, which is a conscious decision, but it's fate that puts you in the room together. Destiny puts you in the same workplace or in the same school, and so it clearly has a very strong influence on personal relationships, I think."

It was time travel that most interested McAdams and she's obviously given the idea some serious thought. "I would love to be able to see my parents falling in love or to see them as children. I think that would be kind of neat," she smiles.