Glamour Women of the Year – Film Actress Gemma Arterton. You’ve fallen for Gemma Arterton’s talent, and Hollywood’s pretty keen, too. Some actors wait their entire career to accumulate the diverse range of roles that Gemma has already notched up. Congrats, Gemma!

GALLERY LINKS:
- Scans: Glamour (UK) – July 2011, thanks to Lorna
- Scans: Metro (UK) – June 8, 2011, thanks to Lorna

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

A plethora of London’s theatre stars will be celebrating today as awards season gets underway with the announcement of the Evening Standard Theatre Awards nominations long list.

Judi Dench, Gemma Arterton, Sheridan Smith and Keira Knightley are among the nominees for the Natasha Richardson Award for Best Actress.

The Evening Standard Theatre Awards, the first prize-giving of the London theatre awards season, announces its long list for categories including Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Play, Best Musical, Best Director, Best Design, Most Promising Playwright and Outstanding Newcomer, before whittling the nominees down to a short list on 21 November and finally a winner, crowned at a ceremony on 28 November.

Full Evening Standard Theatre Award Nominees Long List.

The Little Dog Laughed is presented in a new production directed by Jamie Lloyd at the Garrick Theatre. The play was originally produced at Off-Broadway’s Second Stage Theatre in 2006 before transferring to Broadway’s Cort Theatre, where Julie White won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play for creating the role of Diane. That role is played here by U.K comedy actress Tamsin Greig, joined by rising young film actor Rupert Friend, Harry Lloyd and Gemma Arterton. It opened at the Garrick Theatre Jan. 20, following previews from Jan. 8, and ends its limited run as scheduled April 10.

To book tickets for remaining performances of The Little Dog Laughed, contact the box office at 0844 579 1974 or visit www.nimaxtheatres.com.

June 2009, Shepperton Studios, Surrey. On the set of Clash of the Titans, a toga-clad Gemma Arterton is gracefully evoking the aura of a mysterious spiritual guide while clutching a script and an iPhone. She is playing the ‘wise and ethereal’ Io in this big-budget remake of the cult 1981 film based on the myth of Perseus, Zeus’s mortal son who leads a band of warriors to defeat Hades, battling Medusa and the Kraken along the way. She shares the screen with Avatar’s Sam Worthington (as Perseus), Liam Neeson (Zeus), Ralph Fiennes (Hades) and, courtesy of the 85 special-effects and animation teams employed by the director Louis Leterrier, a menagerie of fantastical creatures.

‘I’ve always played quite feisty characters,’ Arterton says. ‘And Io is feisty, but there’s a real subtext going on with her. I was really interested in playing that in contrast to anything I’ve done before. And anyway, Clash of the Titans was my favourite film when I was a kid, so I just really wanted to be involved in it. I would have been a spear-carrier.’

Arterton, 24, has enjoyed a remarkable career since graduating from Rada in 2007. Early roles came in Stephen Poliakoff’s TV film Capturing Mary (a part she filmed while still a student) and the 2007 St Trinian’s remake. But she leapt to public attention when she played Strawberry Fields in 2008′s Quantum of Solace.

It was a small role – one that, naturally, involved a sex scene with Daniel Craig’s 007 – but not a fluffy one: Arterton revealed mettle behind the glamour. In the title role in the BBC’s 2008 production of Tess of the D’Urbervilles she gave an emotive and intuitive performance, offering a brilliant showcase of her raw but confident acting skills.

Eight months after our encounter in Ancient Greece, I meet Arterton again in a modern Chinese restaurant in central London. She is enjoying the calm before the storm. Clash of the Titans will be released next month, swiftly followed by her second blockbuster of 2010, Prince of Persia, in which she plays an all-action priestess opposite Jake Gyllenhaal.

Based on the popular 1990s computer game, Prince of Persia is a $250 million action-adventure epic from Jerry Bruckheimer, the producer behind the all-conquering Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Arterton is the female lead – indeed, the only female. In her audition, the director Mike Newell asked if she could modify her working-class Kent accent and ‘do posh’.

Arterton, whose father is a plater (he has told her that this is a more accurate job description than welder) and whose mother is a cleaner employed in various houses in Gravesend, admits that she was ‘really cheeky’ and replied, ‘Oh, f*** off, it was the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art I went to…’ Her chutzpah won her the part.

She says that she occasionally got ‘lost’ during the six-month Prince of Persia shoot, location filming for which took place in Morocco. ‘I had quite a hard time on the film because it was away from home, my first big-budget movie, a lot of pressure, people pulling you this way and that.’ She was in the gym seven days a week, undertook stunt training, and found herself being filmed by 12 cameras.

Newell, whose cv includes Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Four Weddings and a Funeral, counters that he saw no sign of Arterton ‘losing’ herself during the shoot. ‘I did say to her, “I won’t ever not be there for you. And if you want anything come to me…” But she never did. And people adored her. She’s marvellous looking, but she could act the hind legs off a donkey. She’s sort of a mystery in her own way – this young girl, straight out of drama school, a wonderful new kid on the block.’ Her parents chaperoned her in three-week cycles, ‘and they were just adorable,’ he says. ‘You could see she’s very solidly emotionally rooted.’

After two big-budget fantasy films Arterton was ‘determined to do a play’. And since early February she has been starring in The Little Dog Laughed at the Garrick Theatre in London. ‘Theatre was what I initially did,’ she says of her teenage spells in amateur dramatics and, aged 17, at Dartford’s Miskin Theatre, before she won a full scholarship to Rada. The Little Dog Laughed is a satire on Hollywood’s attitude to homosexuality.

Rupert Friend plays an actor whose agent (Tamsin Greig) encourages him to keep his sexuality secret after he falls in love with a rent boy (Harry Lloyd). Arterton plays the friend and occasional sleeping partner of the rent boy. Arterton had had a couple of other options open to her, but chose The Little Dog Laughed ‘because it says something about the industry I work in that is important to say. And also, it’s not about me being “look at me, look at my performance”, it’s about just being in the play and telling a story.’

The Little Dog Laughed is not the only canny professional left-turn taken by Arterton. In between the two Hollywood features she will be seen in the title role in The Disappearance of Alice Creed, an intense drama shot in a tiny studio in the Isle of Man by a first-time director for the paltry sum of £1 million. Her maverick approach to her career is further underlined by her appearance, again as the lead, in this autumn’s Tamara Drewe, directed by Stephen Frears and based on the newspaper comic strip by Posy Simmonds. ‘She actually looks like the girl in the book,’ Frears says of Arterton. ‘But also, she’s witty and heavenly. And she’s magnetic, for the viewer and the camera – she has that quality in her personality.’

Arterton’s parents divorced when she was five; she has a younger sister, Hannah, who is a musician. It was a ‘functional’ separation. Her new family set-up ‘was just normal’ ultimately. ‘But when I was growing up I remember feeling really abnormal because my mum and dad had split up. But since then it seems that everybody’s mum and dad split up at some point. It’s just harder when you’re younger, because then my mum was a single parent and on benefits. But really, it’s quite normal. She brought us up really well, and very liberally. It’s amazing when I think about it. I mean, you always compare yourself to the kids who have clean carpets and everything’s got doilies underneath it. We never had that – our house was like hippie madness,’ she smiles.

She credits her parents’ work ethic – ‘my dad works six days a week, my mum works no matter what’ – with her own desire to remain busy. ‘I feel very uncomfortable when I’m not working.’

As a teenager she initially thought her future career lay in music. She admits to a teenage past fronting ‘really bad gothic punk bands – singing was my biggest love before anything’. But a role in Alan Ayckbourn’s The Boy Who Fell into a Book while she was at Gravesend Grammar School for Girls marked her out as a talent to watch – she won the best actress prize in a local arts festival.

She was smitten, taking a place on the performance arts course at the Miskin Theatre, although she was still naive as to how one might actually become an actor. The world of West End theatre and films and casting agents felt impossibly distant. ‘Even though it’s only 40 miles away from Gravesend, it was still London, the bright lights,’ she says. ‘My family were never involved in anything like that – they were all grafters.’

It was only after a teacher at the Miskin Theatre explained to her that drama school was how actors were ‘spotted’ that, aged 17, she decided to apply, securing a place at Rada.

Her drama school lessons in the rigours of physical theatre are put to the test in The Disappearance of Alice Creed. Arterton’s character is kidnapped by two ex-convicts. She spends much of the time handcuffed to a bed. She is hooded, forced to urinate in a bucket, stripped. Indignity after indignity is visited upon her character.

Arterton’s representatives counselled against her accepting the role. ‘But I liked how the story progressed,’ Arterton says. ‘I like the relationships, and the story was unique and gripping. Instinctively I wanted to do that. It was a hard part to play. It required a lot of stamina from day one. On day four, I had to do a scene and I cried for about 12 hours that day. To the point where I couldn’t see! “Let’s do another one…” “But I can’t see the camera, I can’t see the actors, I can’t see the gun…” I knew some people would hate Alice Creed and I knew some would love it. But surely that’s why you want to do something? You don’t want to people-please all the time. And I think it shows me in a different light to what everybody expected.’

‘I’d seen her in St Trinian’s and the Bond movie,’ says the film’s director, J Blakeson, ‘and you couldn’t tell from those whether she was right for the role of Alice. But then I saw her in Tess of the D’Urbervilles and she had a lot of hard work to do in that. She was the first actress who came in and read for the part and she had such a feistiness that she was perfect. Alice is a victim. But it’s also very important that she had this fightback spirit. She has that behind her eyes. Gemma has that toughness in herself. She doesn’t need protecting.’

As much is evident in Arterton’s candid account of her dealings with a much-reported remake of Wuthering Heights. Having at first agreed to play Cathy, she pulled out. ‘I felt the wind went out of the sails a bit. I just didn’t like the direction it was going in. It became a bit teenybopper.’ Then she heard that Andrea Arnold, the director of Fish Tank, was taking the helm. Arterton did a quick volte-face. ‘I don’t care if it’s rubbish, I just want to work with Andrea,’ she says, adding that she prefers edgy directors such as Lars von Trier, Michael Haneke and Arnold. ‘I’m not really into the blockbuster side, but that’s the side I’ve ended up doing. I never go to see those films.’

Arterton and Arnold met over a cup of tea and bonded over their home towns; Arnold is from Dartford, which is near Gravesend. ‘But Andrea sent me an email yesterday saying that she’s going for a 16-year-old – probably pure Yorkshire lass.’ Arterton shrugs. She was desperate to play Cathy, but ‘I’d rather the right person be in it than me be a little bit shit… I know she’ll probably make the best Wuthering Heights movie. I love her. I think she’s amazing.’

In any case, it has all worked out. Arterton is now available to take a part in a film she first secured almost three years ago but which is only now being made. The day after she finishes in The Little Dog Laughed next month she flies to Canada to film The Diary with the Danish director Bille August. She plays a widow during the Second World War. ‘It’s the first woman I’m playing, not a girl,’ she says excitedly. ‘She’s sophisticated.’

‘Gemma’s very broadly talented – she doesn’t want to get stuck in any one kind of work,’ Mike Newell offers. ‘I think she’s choosing very well and carefully. And she’s getting a big, broad spectrum of work. And also she gets films made now. The people who fund film in the Isle of Man are not going to feel bad about employing the girl from a big tentpole Bruckheimer movie.’

For Arterton, such leverage and room for artistic manoeuvre are paramount. ‘When you play a Bond girl, that’s what you will always be, for ever and ever. And that’s fair enough. But you want to say, no, I can do other stuff. It’s about showing different facets. Now, because I’ve done these [big] movies, I’ve got more leeway and I can get those other jobs. Whereas before I couldn’t because nobody knew who I was.’

‘Clash of the Titans’ is released on April 2,’The Disappearance of Alice Creed’ on April 30

Source

Thanks to Lorna!

GALLERY LINKS:
- Magazine Scans: Clippings from 2010
- Clash of the Titans (2010) -> Related Clippings: DVD and blu ray Review (UK) – May 2010
- The Little Dog Laughed (2010) -> Related Clippings: Heat (UK) – March 20 to 26, 2010

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

Thanks to Lorna!

GALLERY LINK:
- Magazine Scans: GQ (UK) – April 2010

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

I’ve also added a wallpaper for March to the site, in various sizes. Click:

GALLERY LINKS:
- The Little Dog Laughed (2010) -> Related Clippings: The Stage (UK) – February 25, 2010
- Candids: February 27, 2010

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

Heather and Ruth both went to see The Little Dog Laughed on February 17, 19 and 20 – and kindly shared their gorgeous photos with us.
Heather:

Hi, been a reader of your site from the start & am a huge fan of Gemma! Last Wednesday (17th) I travelled to London from Liverpool to see The Little Dog Laughed, it was well worth going and I am actually going again to the last night can’t wait! Thought Id e-mail in my pics anyway!!

GALLERY LINK:
- Personal Pictures: With Fans

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

Armani has lent its sartorial edge to the West End, dressing the cast of The Little Dog Laughed starring Tamsin Greig, Gemma Arterton, Harry Lloyd and Rupert Friend at the Garrick Theatre. The play, written by Douglas Carter Beane, is as sharp as the attire and brilliantly funny.

Keira Knightley’s other half Rupert Friend leads the cast playing a homosexual actor reluctant to admit his sexuality to the world. Tamsin Greig, as his agent, has perfect comic timing, whilst Gemma Arterton – playing Friend’s wife – proves that her acting credentials go far beyond “former Bond girl”.

The costumes by Armani come from the brand’s Emporio Armani collection and are a mixture of archive pieces from previous seasons.

Source: Vogue.co.uk

Written by Douglas Carter Beane, The Little Dog Laughed is a cautionary tale of Hollywood film actor Mitchell (Friend) who wants to come out of the closet, his agent Diane (Greig) who wants him to stay in it and the love triangle created when Mitch falls for rent boy Alex, who has a girlfriend named Ellen (Arterton).

The play premiered Off-Broadway in January 2006 before transferring to Broadway later that year, when it was Tony nominated. The title refers to a short story written by the fictional character Arturo Bandini in John Fante’s 1930s Los Angeles-set novel Ask the Dust.

Click here to listen to the Q&A.

[...]

Highlights:

On the inspiration behind the play

Jamie Lloyd: It’s inspired by a lot of different things. Douglas actually started writing the story of Alex, the rent boy, almost as a sort of diary of a rent boy and it kind of evolved into who he may have slept with. I think originally he was a politician, and therefore there was some kind of neo-con political leader that was trying to cover it up. That gradually got turned into the character of Diane and the agent. He said to Armistead Maupin, who did Tales of the City, “I’ve got this idea about this closeted Hollywood actor but it seems sort of dated, it seems like a very Rock Hudson – 50s issue.” So Armistead listed about 40 or 50 well known actors who are in the closet, so it seemed like a totally relevant issue. He didn’t tell us the names (laughter), I don’t think I should do that.

On the plays central theme – being gay in Hollywood

Tamsin Greig: When you’re no longer a common sex symbol, then you can come out of the closet. It’s alright to be an old gay, isn’t it ? But not a young gay, if you want to be taken seriously as a heterosexual either in film or on stage.

Gemma Arterton: Yes it is, you just don’t talk about it, even in Britain. It’s true though that you can be an actor and gay in Britain, but I think there are young actors in Britain that people know are gay but they just don’t talk about it. Otherwise people may not see past it, it’s a real shame. I have definitely come into contact with it, on the Hollywood side; where there’s no way that you could come out if you wanted to be a leading man.

Jamie Lloyd: The bottom line is, Hollywood thinks about sales. They think about bums on seats.

On celebrity culture

Tamsin Greig: We are all obsessed with what people do in their private lives. If you pick up the Metro or the Evening Standard and you looked at two of those pages, you’ll see it, we’re all complicit. There’s that and also the problem of knowing too much about people’s private lives because you know so much so when you see them in a movie and you think “I know this so I can’t believe that”. If we didn’t know anything we’d go “wow what an interesting story”. It is not just about Hollywood, but about the general public. We’re all complicit in the duplicity.

On what drew the actors to their parts

Rupert Friend: Jamie sort of bullied me. I honestly believe that you should look for things that scare you in your life to do every day. At the point in my life that Jamie suggested this play I couldn’t think of anything more frightening to do. To try and make myself believe, or to tackle in a theoretical and a real sense the idea of someone who would discover true love and throw it all away for the sake of their career. The idea of playing a gay man and the idea of not just being on any stage, but on the West End stage – all combined to make the most frightening thing that I could think of. So I had tea with Jamie and explained all that and said “so you see that really what I’m saying is” – “is that you want to do it”. So I said “Yeah, ok”.

Gemma Arterton: I was very interested in playing someone who uses humour as a weapon or defence mechanism. It’s lovely to play someone that’s very sad and desperate but who is covering it with humour. It’s a really lovely thing to have to conjure everyday and then put a lid on. It’s hard but that was the challenge for me. The flip side is she’s fun. And it’s also about the story, saying “this is what it’s like and isn’t it a shame”. Also, there’s an irony of me doing a play which takes the piss out of Hollywood, having done Hollywood movies. I thought that would be quite funny!

Harry Lloyd: I remember reading the script and I remember the bit which really got me, the bit after the interval when you can hear the boy’s thoughts. Something was really interesting about this guy who is thinking ‘I love this guy, but I don’t want to be gay’ that must be a real conundrum. I think that was fascinating and playing a guy, who opposed to Mitchell, allows himself to go down that path.

Tamsin Greig: When I first read it I thought I can’t play it because I didn’t like her. I thought that was the reason to do it because I thought, ‘I can’t do this. I don’t know who she is’, I don’t think I can spend time with her. And the whole thing about how she interacts with the audience so much, I just thought that’s impossible. I had a meeting with Jamie and he’s very clever. He doesn’t look it but it’s a clever little disguise, he’s really clever. He triple dares you, in rehearsals and previews, not just double dares, triple dares you to do stuff. He’s very playful and I thought this is such a tricky play that you have to have someone who knows how to play in order to help you.

On the energy in the play

Jamie Lloyd: Douglas Carter Bean has that energy. I always have the writer read bits of the play to me, before rehearsal to get a feel of the energy, rhythm and the intent. No to say Doug did it like this so you have to do it that way but just to get a general feel. He really has that energy. Every line is a witty remark.

Gemma Arterton: When we were in rehearsals on the first day he said “and my agent was fantastic and then she died of heroine” and I laughed and he went “no really, she died”. And I felt terrible but we have a tendency to be British and quite reticent but you can’t be like that you have to say here’s what I’m saying and leave it out there, like he does.

Jamie Lloyd: It is the only way it works. It is so inherent in his writing. It’s his voice. And the stakes are that high, it is that important. It’s so important for Diana to get this done in the right way unless it’s that important it doesn’t mean as much.

Harry Lloyd: Something which makes it even more intense is something we worked out early on – it’s what we call topspin. Like in the scene when we are sitting outside the club, Ellen is reeling from being dumped but so much of what she is saying is, “I’m fine, I’m laughing, isn’t this funny, but oh my god”. So you are playing against what you are feeling. When you are upset you get that manic energy because you are trying so hard to convince everyone that you are fine. So that is the energy that a lot of the play is powered by, the fact that these guys are lying all the time.

Jamie Lloyd: I think you play the contradiction more than you should. Some of our rehearsals were really miserable. The subtext literally rises to the surface. It’s like Coward or some Pinter, you have to create this volcanic well of emotion and then you have to cover it up. That’s how these people negotiate their way through life.

The The Little Dog Laughed photos were taken by Alastair Muir (Photocall) and Hugo Glendinning (On Stage) – thanks to Lorna for sending them in.

GALLERY LINKS:
- The Little Dog Laughed (2010): Photocall
- The Little Dog Laughed (2010): On Stage
- Photoshoots: Daily Mail (2008)
- Photoshoots: Portrait Session (2008)
- Photoshoots: Glamour UK (2007)
- Candids: February 2, 2010

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

Thanks to Lorna for these!
UPDATE:
I’ve also added a wallpaper for February to the site, in various sizes. Click:

GALLERY LINKS:
- The Little Dog Laughed (2010) -> Related Clippings: Mail on Sunday (UK) – January 31, 2010
- Magazine Scans: Harpers Bazaar (UK) – March 2010
- Magazine Scans: Glamour (UK) – March 2010

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

But that’s not all, Gemma will be on Loose Ends (BBC Radio 4) this evening (Saturday, January 30th) from 6.15 to 7pm!

Would you like a little treat on this Tuesday afternoon? Course you would!

Thanks to Grazia’s theatre land friends, you can get your hands on two tickets for Broadway’s hilarious new comedy, The Little Dog Laughed. Showing at the Garrick Theatre, the play revolves around the superficial world of show business and the game playing of the movie industry. Sound’s good, right? But wait till you hear this; the show stars Brit talent Gemma Arterton as well as the chiseled features of Rupert Friend.

And that’s not all! They’re also offering you travel to London and one night’s accommodation including breakfast at the Trafalgar Hilton Hotel, plus a meal for two at J Sheekey’s Oyster Bar (www.j-sheekey.co.uk). Now, aren’t they good to you?

To be in with a chance of winning this corker of a prize, just answer the question here.

My friend Tonny went to see The Little Dog Laughed on Saturday. She got her programme signed and scanned it for us.

GALLERY LINKS:
- The Little Dog Laughed (2010) -> Related Clippings: Signed Programme
- Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010) -> Related Clippings: Total Film (UK) – March 2010 (Thanks to Lorna!)
- Candids: January 23, 2010
- Candids: January 25, 2010

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

Thanks to Lorna for the scan!

GALLERY LINKS:
- The Little Dog Laughed (2010) -> Related Clippings: Daily Express (UK) – January 22, 2010
- Candids: January 23, 2010

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

Actress Gemma Arterton says she has fallen for life on the West End stage after starring in blockbuster hits.

Arterton, 24, has already appeared in big-screen hits such as St Trinian’s, Bond film Quantum of Solace opposite Daniel Craig and Prince of Persia: The Sands Of Time.

She recently made her stage debut in the play The Little Dog Laughed at the Garrick Theatre where she stars with Tamsin Greig, Harry Lloyd and Keira Knightley’s boyfriend Rupert Friend.

She told UK newspaper the Daily Express: ‘I really love coming back to the stage.

‘It is a much more rounded experience to working in films, which can be quite airy fairy, although working with Jake Gyllenhaal was great. He is lovely.’

Source

GALLERY LINKS:
- Candids: January 19, 2010
- The Little Dog Laughed (2010): Curtain Call on Press Night
- The Little Dog Laughed (2010): Press Night After Party

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

Thanks to Lorna for the scans!

GALLERY LINKS:
- The Little Dog Laughed (2010): Photocall – January 15, 2010
- Magazine Scans: Clippings From 2010
- Candids: January 19, 2010

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

GMTV are giving away a trip to see Gemma in The Little Dog Laughed to one lucky person. This amazing prize includes two tickets to the show plus one night’s accommodation including breakfast and dinner at the luxury Trafalgar Hilton.

Rising film star, Mitchell Green, is every girl’s fantasy and soon to become a household name, thanks to his devilish agent Diane. With Mitchell on the brink of superstardom, Diane encounters one teensy-weensy obstacle – she can’t seem to keep her leading man in the closet.

With Mitchell’s new ‘friend’ Alex on the scene, and Alex’s beautiful girlfriend Ellen (yes he has a girlfriend!) causing a drama of her own, what lengths will Mitchell go to play the part? And will there be a Hollywood ending when the final credits role?

Garrick Theatre, Charing Cross Road, London, WC2H OHH

For your chance to win this prize, simply answer the question here.