Gemma Arterton was having a ball as she celebrated the impact Lottery funding has had around the UK.

Casino Royale [sic!] star Gemma teamed up with dancers from the English National Ballet as well as youth groups to raise awareness of the £25 million raised by Lottery players each week towards good causes.

They were launching a six-week nationwide tour – the National Lottery’s Britain Has Balls Tour – which will call at various locations to spread the word.

The 24-year-old Bond beauty, who also starred in the St Trinian’s movie, said she had benefited from the funding which goes to sport, arts, heritage, education, charity and voluntary projects countrywide.

Speaking from London’s South Bank, near the Globe Theatre, where she made her stage debut in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labours Lost in 2007, she said: “The Globe is lottery-funded and my drama school, Rada, was lottery-funded and a few of the films I’ve done.

“The St Trinian’s films and Tamara Drewe, which comes out later this year, they were lottery-funded, so it’s been really important to my career and in my training as well, so I wanted to lend my support because it really enables a lot of creative projects to be made,” she said.

As well as starring in Hollywood blockbusters Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time and Clash Of The Titans this year, Arterton also appears in British independent films The Disappearance Of Alice Creed and Tamara Drewe, which she said are the kind of projects that rely on lottery funding.

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