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.

Her last movie, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time wasn’t universally loved by the critics, but it did well with audiences, helped on by Jake Gyllenhaal in the lead.

He joins forces with beautiful princess Tamina, played by Arterton, to prevent a villainous nobleman from controlling the Sands of Time, a gift from the gods that can reverse time and allow its possessor to rule the world.

It wasn’t an easy ride to the top for Arterton.

Her parents, a cleaner and a welder, divorced when she was five and she was brought up on a Gravesend council estate by her single mum.

After attending Gravesend Grammar School for Girls she took a performance arts course at the Miskin Theatre in Dartford, and then trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

She said: “The whole scale of Prince of Persia was out of this world.

“When we were in Marrakesh before we started filming they took me to visit the set for the kingdom where my character, Tamina, lives. It was unbelievable.

“There were streets you could walk around and palaces and fortresses and market squares.

“And I was thinking, ‘I’m playing the princess of this place, just little old me’. It’s humbling because after everybody’s done all this work, you think, well, now I really have to come up with the goods.

“The princess is a bit of a tomboy sometimes, and she even has to pretend to be a sort of fictional 6th century cocktail waitress at one point.

“I’ve also got some great costumes with henna tattoos and jewels in my hair and things like that. I’m the only girl in the film, so I have to try to look good.”

When told she had the part, she said: “It was surreal. I just sat there on my bed not quite taking it in. It’s weird to think you’re going to be a princess.”

And she gets to kiss Gyllenhaal, saying: “My friends were always asking if I kiss him. And I say, ‘Yes, I do, so there!’ They’re all wildly jealous.”

As for her future, a Hollywood mansion is still not on the cards because she likes to stay near Kent.

Gemma said: “I love London and I need to stay somewhere where I’m around normal people, like my parents, who really keep me grounded.

“I also need to be able to go down the pub now and then.

“Do they even have pubs in Hollywood?”

• Prince of Persia: Sands of Time is available on Disney Blu Ray, DVD and Double Play, out September 13.