There is a scene in A Lot Like Love where star-crossed lovers Ashton Kutcher and Amanda Peet pose naked for a photograph in the depths of the Arizona desert.
It's all done in soft focus, against a brilliant moonlit sky, and with love, not sex, providing the emotional backdrop. Fans of both Kutcher and Peet will lap it up. As for Cole, an old hand at persuading his stars to strip on camera, it must have felt like being back in the Yorkshire Dales with Helen Mirren, Julie Walters and company on Calendar Girls. He laughs at the association. "I had just finished Calendar Girls in which I had to persuade 11 women, all aged over 50, to take their clothes off, so I am one of the world's leading experts on that. People come to me for advice about how to get actors to take their clothes off!
"Ashton has the kind of body I would give 10 years of my life for, but he was nervous about showing it. It is always the really attractive people who say 'Oh, I'm not sure about showing my butt'. But seriously, being naked always makes people nervous. I did offer to go naked as well as them, in the hope that it might help if I did it too, but they both begged me to keep my clothes on."
Cole could have had his pick of scripts following the phenomenon that was Calendar Girls – the true-life tale of the WI ladies from a sleepy Yorkshire hamlet who became international celebrities while raising cash for charity by striping for a tasteful calendar.
In the end, he opted for a fairly low-budget production that appealed to his personal tastes. A fan of Hollywood rom-coms such as Annie Hall, When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle, he plumped for A Lot Like Love in which a lovelorn couple play a lengthy game of tag. As a master of that maligned genre often referred to as "the chick flick", it was a wise move.
"My previous films, Calendar Girls and Saving Grace, were about middle-aged women (Helen Mirren and Brenda Blethyn]. That was great, but I wanted to do something different. I thought I needed to do something younger and sexier," he said.
"I got offered a lot of scripts following the success of my first two films and I was very keen to do a romantic comedy because I love them, but for a long time I couldn't find a good one. I wanted one that was realistic and recognisable, that I could identify with from my own complicated life. And then I read this script and thought it was great. It reminded me of some of my favourite films – old-fashioned romantic comedies which are witty, with good dialogue."
A Hollywood outsider who nevertheless recognised the need to cast recognisable faces as his two lovers, Cole went for Ashton Kutcher, a young actor on the cusp of international stardom but seemingly stuck in film and TV juvenilia, and Amanda Peet, the lithe and toothy sex kitten from The Whole Nine Yards and Something's Gotta Give.
Cole describes Kutcher as "intelligent, sensitive and a very good actor", while Peet "can make you cry and make you laugh, sometimes in the same moment." It was, says Cole, a dream team.
"When you come to Hollywood from another country, you think that there are going to be huge movie stars on every street corner. And when you come to cast a film, you think that you will be overwhelmed with stars. But you (eventually] realise there are not that many, particularly when it comes to younger leading men.
"When you need a handsome charismatic actor who can also be funny, it comes down to two or three actors. So I think Ashton is going to do incredibly well."
He adds: "He is sharp and talented. I never had to tell
him anything twice, and I think he is capable of doing great work. He has a wonderful charm so I think romantic comedies are natural for him but I think he could do serious drama too.
"I think he is as good as or even better than Cary Grant. He has a charm and wit that are very rare, and he is also impossibly good looking. We tried to make him look bad and we failed!"

A Lot Like Love (12A) is on nationwide release from Friday.