She’s avoided the Bond girl curse to star in Stephen Frears’s raucous, raunchy new comedy. Cath Clark hears about squeezing into outfits, her new Sloaney look and ‘Midsomer Murders’

Rising star Gemma Arterton left Rada three years ago. Since then, she has played a head girl (‘St Trinian’s’), a Bond girl (‘Quantum of Solace’) and a canny kidnap victim (‘The Disappearance of Alice Creed’) and been in a blockbuster or two (‘Clash of the Titans’, ‘Prince of Persia’). Now she’s the heroine of black comedy ‘Tamara Drewe’, Stephen Frears’s adaptation of Posy Simmonds’s comic strip. Newspaper columnist Tamara is forced back to the village where she grew up. Once an ugly duckling, she returns, post-nose-job, as a smouldering femme fatale, entangling a trio of admirers: indie-drummer, fit farmer and philandering crime novelist.

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A big thank you goes out to Lorna!

GALLERY LINK:
- Scans: Daily Record (UK) – August 30, 2010

British actress Gemma Arterton thinks it is good when baddies die in films.

The star admits she was pleased with the death scene in her upcoming movie Tamara Drewe because character Nicholas Hardiment (Roger Allam) – who is killed by a herd of cows which have been spooked by a dog – is not a pleasant man to his wife Beth (Tamsin Grieg).

Tamara Drewe is released in the UK on September 10 and in the US on October 8.

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A TIGHT red top and a tiny pair of hotpants gave gorgeous Gemma Arterton her sexiest entrance since she was a Bond girl.

It’s an unforgettable moment in her new film Tamara Drewe – and has even been used on the movie’s poster.

The film has only been released in France but is already a huge hit.

But Gemma, who starred alongside 007 Daniel Craig in Quantum Of Solace, says she’ll remember the sexy scene as one of her most uncomfortable.

“I’m such a prude,” laughs Britain’s rising star.

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KENT NEWS: The county’s very own leading lady Gemma Arterton has bagged her first lead role, which comes as her last movie Prince of Persia arrives on DVD.

Gravesend-born Arterton, 24, had already appeared in several movies when she hit the big time as a Bond girl in Quantum of Solace.

But she is now starring as the title character in Tamara Drewe, which arrives in cinemas on September 10.

She plays a high-flying media ace returning home to the West Country to find a den of violence and laughs.

The film is being promoted as the British feel-good hit of the season.

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Gemma Arterton has revealed she has kept the prosthetic nose from her new film, Tamara Drewe.

The Prince Of Persia star dons a big fake nose to play the title role in Stephen Frears’ new drama, but rather than saying goodbye to it once filming ended, she gave it the pride of place in her bathroom.

“I actually have that nose in my bathroom, framed – it’s great, I just look at it sometimes,” she said.

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Gemma Arterton has revealed she goes to the toilet to hide from her fans when they spot her out and about.

Gemma Arterton goes to the toilet to hide from her fans.

The British actress recently visited her hometown and received so much attention in the restaurant she was eating in she had take evasive action in the rest room.

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Gemma Arterton reveals what’s the secret of surviving as a female on a film set.

Big thanks to the always helpful Lorna!

GALLERY LINK:
- Scans: SFX (UK) – September 2010

Follow us: http://twitter.com/gemma_arterton

Bond Girl Gemma Arterton almost didn’t become the star she is now because she thought acting was just mucking about.

The 24-year-old, who appeared in Quantum Of Solace with Daniel Craig and gritty drama The Disappearance Of Alice Creed, says: “My parents are working class – mum’s a cleaner.

We were quite poor and mum was a single parent. I always liked performing so I did it as a hobby. When I was 16, someone said, ‘You should do it properly’. So I went to performance college in Kent.”

She moved to London at 18 to attend the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art on a full scholarship.

She says: “It’s really hard to get into a drama school like RADA, so you take it seriously when you do. At performance college you just muck about.”

Source

If you’ve seen British actress Gemma Arterton as a Bond girl in Quantum of Solace or as the regal Tamina in Prince of Persia, you really haven’t seen her at all.

Arterton, 24, may be best-known to North American audiences for those two blockbusters, but all that’s going to change with The Disappearance of Alice Creed, a grimy little thriller about a kidnapping that stars Arterton, Eddie Marsan and Martin Compston.

Arterton is not just another pretty face, and The Disappearance of Alice Creed, opening Friday, is proof.

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“Making Clash Of The Titans was also fun but it was a lot warmer.

“It was mostly filmed in Tenerife, where we did all the battles with the giant scorpions. It was great.

“We were either working or drinking beers in the evening, not bad. We were basically spending 24 hours together and became a tight group – Sam, Nicholas Hoult, Liam Cunningham, all of us.

“We were competing all the time, doing sports and all kinds of stuff.

“Gemma Arterton was the only girl but she became just one of the boys. She was good fun and took part in everything.

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GALLERY LINKS:
- Tamara Drewe (2010) > Related Clipping: Be (France) – July 9, 2010
- Scans From 2010: Envy (France) – July 8, 2010
- Scans From 2010: Nylon Guys (USA) – September 2010

Call her the Not-It Girl.

For the past few years, the English actress Gemma Arterton, 24, has been on a trajectory that Hello! magazine dreams are made of: graduation from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts; roles in a gritty Guy Ritchie movie (Rocknrolla) and a frothy Richard Curtis one (Pirate Radio); starring as Elizabeth Bennet and Tess (of the D’Urbervilles) on British TV. Then (drumroll), the break that every starlet fantasizes about: playing Bond girl Strawberry Fields in Quantum of Solace.

Arterton rolled in flagrante with Daniel Craig, and yes, it was good for her. Hollywood and its megabudgets came calling. In Clash of the Titans, she got both a death and a resurrection scene – setting her up for the sequel, which she’ll film next year. In Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, she intoned mystical prophecies like a pro. It appeared that a new It Girl had arisen.

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By ROBERT W. BUTLER
McClatchy Newspapers

Despite having played Bond girl Strawberry Fields in “Quantum of Solace,” it’s hard to think of British actress Gemma Arterton as a resident of our modern age.

In “Clash of the Titans” and “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” she wore sandals and robes to depict inhabitants of magic-filled mythical lands. For TV’s “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” and “Lost in Austen” she was sewn up in 19th-century corsets.

So when Arterton first appears as a kidnap victim in J Blakeson’s new thriller “The Disappearance of Alice Creed,” it’s a bit of a shock.

For starters, she’s stripped of her clothes and wears a bag over her head. And when the bag comes off she’s nearly unrecognizable beneath heavy black eyeliner and a shaggy ‘do.

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The ‘Prince of Persia’ actress deftly balances the indie and blockbuster film worlds, taking a dark turn in the upcoming ‘The Disappearance of Alice Creed.’

“Hallo, it’s Gemma!” The voice on the line is musical as Gemma Arterton apologizes for the early hour, which the London caller imagines to be “something silly” in L.A. Although the cheery-sounding actress is most closely associated with big-budget popcorn movies (” Quantum of Solace,” “Clash of the Titans,” “Prince of Persia”), it’s her dark, twisty new thriller, “The Disappearance of Alice Creed,” which opens Friday, that more suits her tastes.

“People are always surprised when I say Lars von Trier and Michael Haneke are my favorite directors: ‘But you’re so pop!’ They’ve seen me in something very mainstream, which is not necessarily what I would go to see at the cinema myself,” says Arterton, whose musical tastes also run just to the side of mainstream, with Björk, Kate Bush and Radiohead being favorites. “‘Alice Creed’ came out in the U.K. between ‘Clash’ and ‘Prince of Persia,’ so it really challenged people’s perceptions of me.”

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It was less than two years ago that most American filmgoers became familiar with Gemma Arterton, the 24-year old British actress whose all-too-brief tenure in Quantum of Solace ended in… well, oily fashion. Arterton has been more than a little busy (and conspicuous) in the time since, with another pair of blockbuster appearances culminating in this week’s new indie thriller The Disappearance of Alice Creed — in which her title character puts up much more of a fight than her doomed Bond girl.

Arterton appears as Alice, who one day is violently kidnapped by a pair of mysterious hoods (played by Eddie Marsan and Martin Compson) in search of a ransom windfall from her wealthy father. Set almost entirely in a lone, fortified apartment — with Arterton bound, gagged or worse — director J Blakeson’s debut moves pivots from suspense to psychodrama and even to romance and back again, often in seconds flat. Along with his very game ensemble, Blakeson defies viewers to determine who’s playing who — and who has the upper hand, if anyone — from scene to scene.

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In just the past two years, Gemma Arterton’s been drowned in crude oil (in Quantum of Solace), stabbed to death (Clash of the Titans), and dropped off a cliff (Prince of Persia) — is it any wonder she’s tired of blockbusters? “I don’t want to sound too dismissive of big movies because they are fun and you know, they’re business moves and you can’t just be artistic all the time,” she tells us. “But I am more interested in doing only smaller films right now.” Up next for Arterton: serious films with girls’ names in the titles! The Disappearance of Alice Creed, an indie thriller in which she plays the titular kidnapping victim, is out this week. In the fall, she’ll star in Stephen Frears’s Tamara Drewe. Vulture spoke with her during a recent visit to New York about Creed, the movie she hopes to make next (Luca Guadagnino’s Corsica 72), and why she’s not disappointed she wasn’t cast in Transformers 3.

When Megan Fox was fired from her role in Transformers 3 in May, it only took the Internet a few minutes to cast you as her replacement. Was that ever a possibility?
I didn’t even hear anything until I went to meet with another director for something else. He asked, “So, you’re doing Transformers?” I was like, “I’m sorry, what?”

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If you’ve only seen Gemma Arterton in big budget productions like Quantum of Solace, Clash of the Titans and Prince of Persia, you’re really missing out. Lucky for you, Arterton has something new hitting theaters on August 6th and while The Disappearance of Alice Creed may not have been showered with cash and effects like those other productions, it’s certainly far more powerful.

Arterton stars as Alice Creed, the poor young woman Vic and Danny (Eddie Marsan and Martin Compston) target in their kidnapping scheme. They confine their terrified victim to a room while they move along with their plan to make some quick cash at her expense. What Vic and Danny don’t know is that Alice has no intentions of being a good hostage and obeying their orders; she wants to fight back and survive.

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British actress Gemma Arterton had her closest friends fooled by her facial disguise in new movie Tamara Drewe after donning a “massive” prosthetic nose to portray the title character.

Arterton stars as Drewe, a young newspaper journalist torn between two lovers, in the dark comedy, which is based on the graphic novel by Posy Simmonds.

But the star admits her pals struggled to recognise her in costume – and couldn’t believe it was the former Bond girl under the disguise.

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“The Disappearance of Alice Creed” opens with a bravura, wordless sequence in which two men plan and carry out the abduction of a young woman. From there the film takes place solely in an apartment and an abandoned building with a cast of only three performers. As the men attempt to extract a ransom from the woman’s wealthy father, their clockwork plan spins off-course.

“It was entirely on purpose,” said writer-director J Blakeson of the film’s terse, oblique simplicity. “I started with the fact it was going to be a contained film before I even had a story. I knew I was going to write a film I could direct myself even if nobody gave me any money to do it.”

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