The thriller is ‘a continuation’ of Jordan’s earlier Interview with the Vampire

Source: The List
Date: 17 May 2013
Written by: James Mottram

Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire arguably kickstarted the current trend for bloodsuckers. James Mottram speaks to him about returning to the genre for his new flick Byzantium.

‘There have been too many vampire films lately,’ laughs Neil Jordan, perched on a chair in London’s Soho Hotel. You might say the director of Interview With the Vampire only has himself to blame. Without his 1994 take on Anne Rice’s novel, starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, there’d arguably be no Twilight. And while that series is now thankfully at an end, with a sixth season of True Blood and Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive on the way, our thirst for these blood-sucking characters seems unquenched. Read the rest of this entry »

After his successful sojourn in television with The Borgias, Neil Jordan explains how he was drawn back to film by Byzantium, a contemporary vampire story that revisits some of the director’s characteristic themes and breathes new life into an overexposed genre.

GALLERY LINK:
- Byzantium (2013) > Related Clippings > Sight & Sound (UK) – June 2013

Thanks to Chuckie.

GALLERY LINKS:
- Scans from 2013 > Observer: The New Review (UK) – May 12, 2013
- Scans from 2013 > Clippings – Daily Express (UK) – May 6, 2013

The English actress on going clubbing with her mum, her new role in a ‘neo-feminist vampire movie’ and why she has no regrets about playing Bond girl Strawberry Fields

By Tim Lewis

The first time we see Gemma Arterton in her new film, Byzantium, she is biting off the nose of a lecherous punter in a lap-dancing club. Soon after, dressed in a stripper’s outfit and running shoes, she shows a good turn of speed for a 200-year-old soucouyant and then garottes another man with cheese wire. Byzantium is a vampire film, but we already know it’s altogether darker, sexier and more gleeful than some recent incarnations of the genre. At the heart of the action are Clara (Arterton) and her daughter, Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan), and their battle against an all-male cabal that wants to hunt them down.

The 27-year-old Arterton has always been drawn to the weird and eclectic – the film that made her want to become an actress was Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark – but that has not stopped the girl from Gravesend being wooed by Hollywood. Popcorn-friendly roles in Clash of the Titans and Prince of Persia have been interspersed with smart, subversive turns in The Disappearance of Alice Creed and Tamara Drewe. On the phone from Berlin, we spoke about big and little films, clubbing in your 50s and the secret of a perfect lemon meringue pie.

What are you doing in Berlin?
I’m shooting a film called The Voices directed by Marjane Satrapi, who is brilliant. She’s a graphic novelist who did a book and film called Persepolis. I’ve never had such a good feeling with a director – she’s incredible and I’m really happy because I know we’re making good stuff. Read the rest of this entry »

By Liz Hoggard | Yahoo UK Movies News

British actress Gemma Arterton has told ‘The Observer’ newspaper that she loved tracking down her character’s wardrobe for Neil Jordan’s new film ‘Byzantium‘ in Soho sex shops.

“We wanted the clothing that she wore to be part of her kit, part of her killing kit, so everything was very conscious. The costume designer, Consolata Boyle, is very put together and sensible and it was fun going to these shops with her and her looking at the fabric quality and the seams. These clothes were so disgusting, but she’d go: “Ooh, it’s very beautiful, this colour.” Read the rest of this entry »

Helen Barlow meets the British actress with blue-collar beginnings

It’s hard not to imagine the voluptuous Gemma Arterton being typecast in Britain, a country where actresses tend to be petite British roses.

Generalisations aside though, Arterton, who was briefly a Bond girl – the blink-or-you’ll-miss-her Strawberry Fields in Quantum of Solace – is still a natural working class lass who strives to remain true to her roots and not get carried away by the fuss her very presence creates.

Her new role in the comedy drama Song for Marion suits her agenda perfectly, and even if her choir mistress in the film seems just a little too sweet, she’s not too far from the incredibly-good-natured Arterton I meet today.

Not many British actresses have such range. “There are some who do, Kate Winslet for example,” Arterton counters, attempting to downplay any claim to being fabulous, “and yes, in Song for Marion I’m geeky, not sexual at all. I do also get these bombshell type roles that are fun to play, but I am trying to mix it up a bit.”

In the film, terminally ill Marion gains courage by continuing to sing in a local seniors’ choir, with Arterton’s Elizabeth eventually convincing Stamp’s crotchety Arthur to take her place. Read the rest of this entry »

GALLERY LINK:
- Song for Marion (2012) > Related Clippings > Premiere (France) – May 2013

Tu Style still gets it wrong. Stefano Catelli isn’t an Italian stuntman Gemma met on the set of Quantum of Solace.

If reposting our scans, please don’t remove our tag, give some us credit and a link back. We spend a lot of money from our own pockect to always bring you exclusive Gemma scans whenever we can. Tu Style is a Gemma-Arterton.net exclusive goodie.

GALLERY LINK:
- Scans from 2013 > Tu Style (Italy) – May 7, 2013

Credit goes out to Mat Cyruss.

GALLERY LINK:
- Scans from 2013 > The Hunger #4 (UK)

Song for Marion is about to premiere in France (alert to French fans: it’ll be released nationwide on May 15th) and French magazine Grazia interviewed Gemma Arterton on behalf of this occasion.

Gemma’s character in Song for Marion, Elizabeth, is a woman without friends, without a boyfriend and without sex-appeal. So Grazia had the idea of making an interview about the ‘withouts’ in Gemma’s life.

The session itself was first published by Glamour USA back in 2010 and it can be found over here.

If reposting our scans, please don’t remove our tag, give some us credit and a link back. We spend a lot of money from our own pockect to always bring you exclusive Gemma scans whenever we can and we’re lucky to have regular contributors who do the same for us. Grazia France is a Gemma-Arterton.net exclusive goodie.

We thank Ludovic copiously.

GALLERY LINK:
- Scans from 2013 > Grazia (France) – May 3-9, 2013

Gemma looks divine and the interview is really worth a read!

Credit goes out to http://fashionscansremastered.net/.

GALLERY LINK:
Scans from 2013 > Marie Claire (UK) – June 2013

Gemma Arterton is not only recognised from her English Rose features or her formidable acting talent, but she’s also famed for her gloriously hourglass figure. Something many women and clearly men admire, but the star is more concerned with what the pressure of weight loss is doing to female actors.

As the gorgeous Gemma Arterton graces the June issue of Marie Claire she reveals how she really feels about her body and the amount of attention the press and public give it. ‘People don’t go on about it as much now, because I’ve said I just don’t care,’ she tells us. ‘But it’s good to talk about it.’

And her refreshing approach to image doesn’t stop there, expressing empathy towards other celebrities who feel pressured to loose weight.

Gemma Arterton adds: ‘Today I saw an actress I know and she’s lost so much weight. She’s gone from a size 12 to a size four within two months.’ While shocking, the British star knows this is an example of something on a much wider scale…

The former Bond girl continues: ‘There are so many good, intelligent actresses doing this, and I just think, “Why does that go hand in hand with the acting profession?” It shouldn’t. It lets the side down. It lets down team woman.’

And team woman is something very close to her heart as Gemma reveals she loves ‘going all feminist.’

We’re right behind you Ms Arterton!

Source

On her accent: It would be easy to write off Arterton as a modern-day Eliza Doolittle – the beguiling girl from the grubby council estate whose raw talent was her ticket out, the rough diamond who made it to theatre school, then RADA and got poshed up by elocution coaches and Oxbridge classmates. But that would be the Hollywood version, a simple 2D trajectory. The reality is more multicoloured than that and Arterton was never anybody’s project. ‘People make a big deal out of my accent,’ she shrugs. ‘I think they bang on about it because they assume I’m posh and then they hear me and I’m clearly not.’

On her relationship: Arterton is honest and welcoming, but is also so guarded about her private life that, in June 2010, she got married without anyone knowing much about it. The press only snatched some long-lens snaps of her looking radiant during an outdoor ceremony in Andalucia, Spain. Laughing opposite her was her seldom-talked-of groom, Stefano Catelli, who she’d kept so secret that, for a time, the press believed he was a Bond stuntman, but is actually an Italian businessman who works in the fashion industry. Then, in February, the press was playing catch-up again. Set against less-smiling pictures of her heading to a party alone came the headlines that she and Catelli had separated. She was, reportedly, devastated. I know she is discreet but, since it’s out there, I say it would be weird if I didn’t ask. She manages some answers without being prickly or overly evasive. ‘Ummm,’ she thinks. ‘It was a wonderful time and I have nothing bad to say about it. [Even if they don't last] relationships can enrich your life in some way and then you move on to the next part – it’s all part of the process of living.”

On marriage: ‘I don’t know how I feel about marriage; whether it’s really necessary,’ she says. ‘If you are not religious, what does it mean? I’d always thought that – then I got married. And now I still believe in what I believed in when I was a child.

On soulmates: Does she subscribe to the soulmate theory? She smiles and shakes her head. ‘I look at certain couples and they’re soulmates, you can just see it,’ she says. ‘I like the idea that there is a soulmate out there and that you’ve known each other before, like in a past life you were brother and sister or something. I’ve yet to meet that person.”

Her unconventional upbringing: Her mum was a bit left field and bohemian. ‘We would always be painting or doing crafty things with Mum, and she’s inspired us to be musical.’ Sally took her girls to Glastonbury and, at home, they’d have family jam sessions. ‘My mum isn’t a typical mum. She’s individual. At the moment, she’s into clubbing. Last weekend, she went to Area [a superclub in London's Vauxhall]. I haven’t even been to Area! So when you’re a kid, you’re like, “You’re so embarrassing. Why couldn’t you just be like everyone else’s mum and sit at home and drink tea?”

Her new film: I spent this morning in a screening room downstairs watching her latest ‘little’ film, Byzantium, a gloriously dark, intense thriller where she plays Clara, a vampire prostitute and mother who’s so protective of her daughter – played by Saoirse Ronan – she will happily garrotte anyone who poses a threat. In real life, there’s less than ten years between the actresses, but the age difference makes sense when you see the film. ‘I’m just so maternal, it’s a bit weird,’ she laughs. ‘I’m the mother figure in our family in the typical way that I look after everybody and make sure everybody’s OK. I’ve been like that since I was very small, especially with my sister. I have to reign it in a bit, because I’m not her mum.’

GALLERY LINK:
- Photoshoots > Marie Claire UK (2013)

By Andrei Harmsworth

Arterton refuses to let the demise of her two year marriage to Italian hubby Stefano Catelli stop her believing in love or soul mates.

Speaking about her shock split from the fashion boss at the start of the year for the first time, the 27-year-old British star said: ‘It was a wonderful time and I have nothing bad to say about it. [Even if they don’t last] relationships can enrich your life in some way and then you move on to the next part – it’s all part of the process of living.’

‘I don’t know how I feel about marriage; whether it’s really necessary,’ Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters star now reckons after failing to go the distance with Catelli.

‘If you are not religious, what does it mean? I’d always thought that – then I got married. And now I still believe in what I believed in when I was a child.’

These days the star from Kent says she’ll know who her soul mate is at first sight.

‘I look at certain couples and they’re soulmates, you can just see it,’ she told Marie Claire.

‘I like the idea that there is a soulmate out there and that you’ve known each other before, like in a past life you were brother and sister or something. I’ve yet to meet that person.’

Read the full interview in the new June issue of Marie Claire (UK) magazine out now.

www.marieclaire.co.uk

Source

“Neil loved me being bad,” declared Arterton when Film3Sixty sit down with her at the Glasgow Film Festival. “My character wasn’t sexual on the page but I felt sexuality should be her weapon of choice. She’s celebrating her feminine wiles and screwing everybody over with them.” Whenever a scene called for Clara to kill in Byzantium, Jordan would rely on his actress to concoct her own murderous methodolody. “There was one scene where I kill someone with a cheesewire while dressed in a stripper’s outfit and trainers,” Arterton recounts with glee. “I remember Neil getting very excited and going, ‘This is so iconic!’”

GALLERY LINK:
Byzantium (2013) > Related Clippings > Film3Sixty (UK) – Spring 2013, thanks to Chuckie

The star of Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters tells Condé Nast Traveller UK’s Lisa Grainger about five fairy-tale hotel hangouts.

GALLERY LINK:
Scans from 2013 > Condé Nast Traveller (UK) – April 2013