Benedict Cumberbatch, Gemma Arterton and Jonny Lee Miller are featured in the February 2012 issue of Vogue UK. They were photographed at London Evening Standard Theatre Awards.

GALLERY LINKS:
- Scans > Vogue (UK) – February 2012
- Scans > Clippings From 2012 –> thanks to the wonderful Lorna for the Star scan
- Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013) > Related Clippings > SFX (UK) – March 2012
- Byzantium (2012) > Related Clippings > Related Clippings > Daily Mail (UK) – January 13, 2012

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The actress stars as Clara, a vampire who has to protect herself and her daughter (played by Saoirse Ronan) from those seeking to plunge a stake through their hearts.

‘She’s brittle and she’s a fighter,’ said Gemma of the role she plays in Byzantium, which is directed by Neil Jordan.

The film — set in both the 18th century and the modern day — is not all glossy surface nonsense like the Twilight pictures. For starters, it has a compelling storyline and much better actors, including Sam Riley, Daniel Mays, Jonny Lee Miller and Tom Hollander.

Byzantium is based on A Vampire Story, a play Moira Buffini wrote for the National Theatre. Buffini then worked with Jordan and producers Stephen Woolley and Elizabeth Karlsen to develop the stage drama into a movie.

‘There’s blood and vampires and all of that, but we focus on the mother-daughter relationship,’ Gemma assured me.

Although Gemma said she did an exaggerated version of her Kent-Thames estuary accent in the remakes of the St. Trinian’s films, she told me she gets to do ‘my accent for once in Byzantium — she’s from the hood’. And, as she pointed out, Hastings — where the film is set — isn’t far from her native Kent.

Gemma’s also in kick-ass form in another movie, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters. ‘It’s about these damaged kids really, and now we’re all grown up,’ she told me.

Jeremy Renner, currently to be seen in Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, plays Hansel to Gemma’s Gretel.

‘Gretel’s quite wild. She’s super cool, and violent,’ Gemma added, describing the action as Tarantino-esque. ‘She has a crossbow, she headbutts people, folk get decapitated, noses get bitten off. It’s so ridiculous that it’s funny, but I wouldn’t mess with her.’

The film’s due out early next year. Gemma has a change of pace in another film, Song For Marion, a gentle drama with a heart in which she plays a teacher and choir-mistress opposite Terence Stamp, Vanessa Redgrave and Christopher Eccleston.

By Baz Bamigboye

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Gemma Arterton was pictured smoking a cigarette while covered in blood during a break from filming on the set of the vampire movie Byzantium in the Ballymun Flats complex in Dublin, Ireland.

After spending the afternoon pretending to be a vampire and getting covered in fake blood, no wonder Gemma Arterton looks in need of a rest.

Filming her new movie Byzantium in Dublin yesterday, the 25-year-old stepped out of character – but not costume – for a few minutes to enjoy a well-earned cigarette break.

Covering up in a dressing gown, the former Bond girl sipped on a cup of coffee as she puffed away.

Arterton had been filming scenes for the upcoming thriller Byzantium in a housing estate in Ballymun, renowned for being an impoverished area of Dublin in the 1970s.

Also on location was her co-star Saoirse Ronan, who also plays a vampire in the film.

Byzantium is adapted from Moira Buffini’s play A Vampire Story, which was commissioned in 2008 by London’s National Theatre.

Arterton and Ronan play two young female vampires who move to a small British town and mystery and intrigue immediately surround the pair who could be sisters or mother and daughter.

In the play, the eldest, Clara, takes a job in a pub while the younger girl, Eleanor, goes to school and during a truth exercise in her drama class, she confesses that she is over 200 years old and has survived on human blood.

Her classmates think she is crazy and her teacher contacts the school counsellor but she makes one friend in the form of Frank who has been home schooled and is considered an outsider.

Arterton started filming Byzantium in Sussex last month.

GALLERY LINK:
- Byzantium (2012) > On The Set (Dublin, Ireland) – January 10, 2012

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The move comes on the heels of the successful opening of Paramount’s micro-budgeted horror pic The Devil Inside and Christmas tentpole Mission: Impossible–Ghost Protocol, which has already earned $458.1 million worldwide. The two films almost guarantee that the studio will have a good fiscal quarter (and Devil Inside–scoring the best opening ever for early January–proves the corridor can be lucrative).

There are two other reasons for the move, according to an insider. The 3D materials for Hansel and Gretel are only now coming in, and Paramount wants time to market the 3D aspect, particularly overseas.

Third, Renner — who stars opposite Tom Cruise in Ghost Protocol — has two other 2012 films, The Avengers, which comes out in early May, and The Bourne Legacy, which hits theaters in early August. The insider said pushing back Hansel and Gretel also allows the movie to benefit from the exposure Renner earns from those two films.

Will Ferrell and Adam McKay’s Gary Sanchez Prods. is producing Hansel and Gretel, which picks up the Brothers Grimm fairy tale 15 years after Hansel and Gretel found the gingerbread house. They’re now bounty hunters. Tommy Wirkola is directing.

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We’re more used to seeing her oozing glamour on the red carpet in haute couture and full make-up.

But actress and Bond girl Gemma Arterton could have been mistaken for just another student as she roamed the UCD campus yesterday.

Make-up-free and wearing a casual grey cardigan and practical, puffa-style jacket, teamed with leggings and biker boots, the 25-year-old British star was dressed for the chilly January weather.

But the overall effect meant she was virtually unrecognisable from her role as a glamorous brunette in the James Bond movie ‘Quantum Of Solace‘.

Ms Arterton was even spotted having a sneaky cigarette on the steps of her trailer during breaks from shooting director Neil Jordan’s latest offering, the vampire thriller ‘Byzantium‘.

A heavily bearded Brendan Gleeson was also spotted on set, laden down with shopping bags and sporting an equally casual look.

The star of ‘The Guard‘, whose much anticipated directorial debut — an adaptation of Flann O’Brien’s ‘At Swim Two Birds‘ is also due out this year — may have been seeking some advice from the veteran director.

Jordan directed Gleeson in a number of movies, most notably ‘Breakfast On Pluto‘.

The stars were photographed during a short break on set at UCD.

Filming for the movie — which also stars Irish starlet Saoirse Ronan as a 200-year-old, piano-playing vampire — began in the UK in December before moving to Ireland.

‘Quantum of Solace‘ star Ms Arterton plays Ronan’s mother in a story which sees her turn her daughter into a vampire before going on a killing spree in a seaside town. The pair also pose as sisters.

‘Byzantium‘ is an adaptation of ‘The Vampire Stories‘, a play written by Moira Buffini, and is a big shift from Jordan’s 2009 lyrical mermaid romance ‘Ondine‘, which starred Colin Farrell and the future mother of his child, Alicja Bachleda.

The film has received funding from the Irish Film Board and from the UK Film Council and has an overall budget of just €8m.

It also stars Caleb Landry Jones from ‘X-Men‘ in the male lead role and boasts a mainly Irish crew.

Shooting for the Irish scenes began in Bray, Co Wicklow last month before moving on to UCD. It will also take place in a number of locations around Dublin.

- Edel O’Connell

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Gemma Arterton was pictured on the set of Neil Jordan’s new vampire movie Byzantium in the UCD campus in Dublin, Ireland.

GALLERY LINK:
- Byzantium (2012) > On The Set (Dublin, Ireland) – January 6, 2012

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GALLERY LINK:
- Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2012) > Related Clippings > Best Movie (Italy) – January 2012

Don’t forget to join the Gemma Arterton Online Bubble for a chance to win an autograph or a DVD!

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Gemma Arterton and Sam Riley film a walking scene on the Byzantium film set in County Wicklow, Ireland. It was the last day of filming before returning in January.

GALLERY LINK:
- Byzantium (2012) > On The Set (Bray, Co. Wicklow, Ireland) – December 23, 2011

Don’t forget to join the Gemma Arterton Online Bubble for a chance to win an autograph or a DVD!

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Gemma Arterton was pictured being beaten up by two men (including co-star Sam Riley), hand cuffed to railings and then threatened with a sword during a night time set shooting of Byzantium in Bray, Co. Wicklow.

GALLERY LINK:
- Byzantium (2012) > On The Set (Bray, Co. Wicklow, Ireland) – December 22, 2011

Don’t forget to join the Gemma Arterton Online Bubble for a chance to win an autograph or a DVD!

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Gemma Arterton was pictured on a car bonnet being driven at speed and then lying dead on the road on the Byzantium film set in Ireland.

GALLERY LINK:
- Byzantium (2012) > On The Set (Bray, Co. Wicklow, Ireland) – December 21, 2011

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Fangoria just got the scoop that Paramount has shifted HANSEL AND GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS out of its March 2 berth and will instead release the movie next fall on a date to be determined. The Hollywood debut of DEAD SNOW director Tommy Wirkola, the film stars Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton as the grown-up brother and sister who’ve never quite gotten over that childhood gingerbread-house incident, and set out to exterminate witches. Famke Janssen, Peter Stormare, Zoe Bell and Derek Mears co-star.

Gemma has a passionate kiss with a fellow actor on the film set of Byzantium. In the scene, she seems to be working in a fun fair, where she kissed a colleague who is working on a ride nearby. Gemma’s character is called Clara.

GALLERY LINK:
- Byzantium (2012) > On The Set (Bray, Co. Wicklow, Ireland) – December 17, 2011

Don’t forget to join the Gemma Arterton Online Bubble for a chance to win an autograph or a DVD!

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

Gemma was spotted on the set of Byzantium in Co. Wicklow, Ireland, last Saturday. She was wearing very tight black leather trousers and was drinking some hot beverage to keep warm.

GALLERY LINK:
- Byzantium (2012) > On The Set (Bray, Co. Wicklow, Ireland) – December 17, 2011

Don’t forget to join the Gemma Arterton Online Bubble for a chance to win an autograph or a DVD!

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

“We’re getting away from the tradition of biting vampires in this film.

“Instead the vampires have talons with which they draw blood.”

On-set photos of the young Irish actress and co-star Caleb Landry Jones can be found online.

GALLERY LINKS:
- Byzantium (2012) > On The Set (Hastings, England) – December 5, 2011
- Byzantium (2012) > On The Set (Hastings, England) – December 6, 2011

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

Gemma was spotted with blood around her mouth after straddling another character on the freezing beach in Hastings, East Sussex.

The movie, Byzantium, will be released next year. With Gemma in, it’s bound to be a suck-cess.

GALLERY LINK:
- Byzantium (2012)> On The Set (Hastings, England) – December 7, 2011

Please join our new Gemma Arterton Online bubble and be an active member!!!

We’ll pick a winner among the most active users to win an autograph of Ms Arterton.

If lots of new members join our bubble, we may pick a second and third place winners as well.

So please spread the word and join our new Gemma Arterton Online bubble and be an active member!!!

She plays a blood-sucking vampire with an air of mystery around her when she moves to a small seaside town.

But while her character might not be giving too much away, Gemma Arterton’s costume is more than making up for that.

The actress was snapped bursting out of her costume as she filmed scenes for her new film Byzantium in Hastings, south east England.

Gemma, 25, looked freezing as she filmed scenes on the beach for the movie in the very low cut red dress.

At one point she filmed scenes where she covered her mouth and looked distressed as she ran along the shingle.

She also managed to flash rather a bit of leg too after getting into a spot of bother with her microphone’s battery pack, which had been tied around her upper thigh under her dress and out of sight.

She had to call on a member of the crew to lift her billowing full skirt on the dress and help her adjust the battery.

The film is directed by Neil Jordan, and also stars The Lovely Bones actress Saoirse Ronan and X Men: First Class‘s Caleb Landry Jones.

Arterton and Ronan play two young female vampires who move to a small British town and mystery and intrigue immediately surround the pair who could be sisters or mother and daughter.

In the book, the eldest, Claire, takes a job in a pub while the younger girl Eleanor, goes to school and during a truth exercise in her drama class, she confesses that she is over 200 years old and has survived on human blood.

But her classmates think she is crazy and her teacher contacts the school counsellor but she makes one friend in the form of Frank who has been home schooled and is considered an outsider.

It is Jordan’s second venture into the vampire genre, 17 years after the success of his big screen adaptation of the Anne Rice book, Interview With The Vampire.

His new blood-sucking tale is also an adaptation, but this time of a play called A Vampire Story by Moira Buffini, which was commissioned in 2008 by London’s National Theatre.

GALLERY LINK:
- Byzantium (2012)> On The Set (Hastings, England) – December 5, 2011

Please join our new Gemma Arterton Online bubble and be an active member!!!

We’ll pick a winner among the most active users to win an autograph of Ms Arterton.

If lots of new members join our bubble, we may pick a second and third place winners as well.

So please spread the word and join our new Gemma Arterton Online bubble and be an active member!!!

Gallery Link:
- Scans: You (UK) – December 4, 2011

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

By Amy Williams

Taking time out from her filming schedule to draw attention to the deforestation crisis in Brazil was a no-brainer for Gemma Arterton. Amy Williams discovers why the actress prefers trekking in the remote Amazon jungle to being ‘styled and polished’ for premieres

Acording to Gemma Arterton, A Turtle’s Tale: Sammy’s Adventures, an animated film that was released last March and which very few people over the age of eight will have heard of, is ‘honestly, the best movie I have ever made’ and ‘absolutely brilliant’ and ‘cute but with a serious message. There are oil spills and stuff.’ Gemma provides the voice of love-interest turtle Shelly.

That Gemma – a former Bond girl who has found fame through blockbusters such as Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time and Clash of the Titans, and plaudits via critically acclaimed movies The Disappearance of Alice Creed and Tamara Drewe – should choose a film which is a) a cartoon, b) has the tag line ‘He’s Turtlely Amazing’, and c), in Gemma’s own words, ‘no one has actually seen’, tells us quite a bit about 25-year-old Ms Arterton.

One thing she appears not to do is take herself too seriously. Which is surprising for a young actress whose CV has steely ambition written all over it (when not filming, or voicing, she takes to the stage – this year in Ibsen’s The Master Builder). A colleague of mine said that she assumed Gemma was humourless because she never looked very happy on the red carpet.

‘That’s hilarious. Me? Nah, I’m not very serious at all,’ Gemma laughs, big brown eyes wide open with incredulity. ‘You should see me with my husband – we are complete idiots when it’s the two of us and we’re with our dog Perla. She’s a shar pei so she’s got this wrinkly nose and every time I look at her I smile.’

A Turtle’s Tale also alludes to an inner eco-chic – in fact, the reason that I find myself discussing the adventures of Shelly and big bad oil spills is because we’re here to talk about the environment, though less about turtles and more about trees, as Gemma has just returned from a six-day journey to the deepest Amazon with Sky Rainforest Rescue.

It’s a trip for which the humourless need not apply. Last year, when I travelled to the same region for the same project with singer Lily Allen, we got stranded in torrential rain on a mud road in an ill-equipped minibus, which we then had to push; we sat through statistic-heavy lectures in 38C heat, and consequently drank the eco-lodge bar dry of caipirinhas. I would bet on it getting a paragraph or two in Lily’s memoirs.

This time I’m meeting Gemma in the comfort of her publicist’s London office. We plonk ourselves on a sofa with a pot of tea. They don’t get many tourists in Acre, the huge Brazilian state on the border of Peru where Sky Rainforest Rescue is based, so it’s an experience over which we bond instantly. ‘It’s so far-flung, isn’t it?’ says Gemma, ‘The whole thing… You travel on three planes and arrive in the middle of nowhere. It’s the kind of place you know you’ll never just “end up.”’
When I ask her why she volunteered she gives the standard answer about having a break between films and wanting to develop her charity work, but I get a sense that this is far from a personal PR project. For starters, there was no Arterton entourage – there wasn’t even a plus one. Pretty brave, I say, to go it alone (albeit with a team from Sky and WWF). She explains that her husband of 18 months, fashion sales manager Stefano Catelli, ‘would have loved it’ but couldn’t get the time off work, and her publicist couldn’t get a visa in time. The cause suits her, she explains, having grown up in a hippie household. (She lived with her mother Sally-Anne, a cleaner, after her parents separated when she was five. Her father Barry is a welder.) ‘We went to Womad [the festival] every year and as children we were always clued up on being green and that kind of thing.’

Plus, Gemma is young enough to have been heavily schooled, at her Gravesend comprehensive, in 1990s hot topics such as the ozone layer – or lack of it – and global warming (‘I’m not really bookish, but I was actually quite good at geography,’ she says, ‘I always know where places are in
the world’). So she gets it and she is well aware that her job is to help reinvigorate an issue that is not as trendy as it used to be.
So here come the facts, folks: the Amazon rainforest is still disappearing at a rate of three football pitches every minute*, as swathes of forest are destroyed for farmland and the building of roads. Sky Rainforest Rescue aims to save one billion trees, and, working with local governments, has helped secure a change in the law, which allows cash incentives to be offered to local communities in order to encourage an economy based on saving trees and not cutting them down. Gemma doesn’t beat about the bush. ‘They are poor, so they have to chop down trees. It would be very narrow-minded of us to deny them the right to make money, or to have access to a decent road, so it’s about compromise,’ she says.

‘One girl I met walked five hours to her job as a rubber tapper [a sustainable use of the forest – utilising trees rather than destroying them], another told me that during the rainy season it takes three days to get to a hospital. Can you imagine?’

Conditions are tough – the remoteness, the oppressive heat, the poverty. It’s not something Gemma has ever witnessed before. She went from school to Rada, then straight into that very rare thing – back-to-back employment as an actor. There was no time for gap years or round-the-world airline tickets. ‘I wish I had taken a year out. I have a longing to go to India. We filmed some of Bond in Panama City and that was a real eye opener,’ she says. ‘We live in such excessive times, so being in the thick of things in Brazil does make you feel a little uncomfortable; it makes you rethink what you do have and what you can change. “Get on your bike!” I now say to myself.’

Out and about at home in South London, she says she rarely gets much attention and mostly hangs out with an extended group of friends. ‘That’s the great thing about getting married – your friendship groups merge, so we’ve got quite a big circle. And no one ever talks about work with me, ever. I hate it when people act differently around me just because I’m famous.’
She must have been recognised in Brazil. I can’t help but think the positive reaction she received from locals may have had slightly more to do with her movie-star status than the project she was promoting. ‘Well, there was one night when we were having drinks and a local girl came over. She was so sweet and kept saying “ohmygod”, but I don’t think she’d seen any of my films. People had just heard that there was a Bond girl in town. That often happens, and they don’t have a clue who I am,’ she says, giggling at a flashback. ‘That’s the night people were taking photos of me dancing on the tables!’ she laughs, not a bit concerned. ‘I mean, they’re not on the internet…yet!’

Gemma makes a good jungle Jane – more at home fresh-faced and in a headscarf than on the red carpet in designer garb. ‘To be honest, I find it the oddest thing to be styled and polished. It’s something I don’t recognise. Sometimes when they doll me up I look at myself in the mirror and think I look like a drag queen.’ She pauses for reflection. ‘Being in the jungle is a bit more me.’

Being a former devotee of bikram yoga helped her cope with the sweat-fest of jungle humidity. ‘I no longer get freaked out by sweating. I didn’t used to be able to perspire too much – I’d just go red and faint!’ She prefers drier forms of yoga now, she says, and Zumba dancing.

She’s an active sort, is Gemma: she likes to keep fit so she can do her own stunts. ‘There is
a scene in Prince of Persia where I had to ride a black stallion towards 15 wild horses that were galloping in my direction. Honestly, I thought I was going to die!’ she says.

Her next projects, the vampire film Byzantium with Saoirse Ronan, and Song for Marion with Vanessa Redgrave, are both stunt free – ‘Though I’m having to learn to play the piano from scratch and to conduct for Song for Marion. We could end up fudging it quite a lot,’ she laughs. Gemma did, though, arrive in the rainforest with a Casio keyboard on which to practise for the role, and luckily she’s mates with Goldie (who won the BBC’s conducting challenge Maestro), so she’s going to enlist his help.

I wonder if she had concerns over putting her face to the rainforest cause; if she’s worried that people might roll their eyes at yet another celebrity dipping into and quickly out of a poverty-stricken region. Is she concerned that she might not make a difference? ‘Well, yeah, I do think about that, but then everyone can make a difference. They say that if we all turned off our appliances at night
there would be enough energy to power Britain.’ So you’ve got to be in it to win it. ‘Exactly. Like
life in general. Like buying a lottery ticket – you might as well try.’

Gemma Arterton visited Brazil with Sky Rainforest Rescue – Sky and WWF’s campaign to help save a billion trees. Amazon, an exhibition of images by Sebastião Salgado and Per-Anders Pettersson featuring photographs from Gemma’s trip, is at Somerset House, London WC2 until 18 December.

For information, visit sky.com/rainforestrescue

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