She’s avoided the Bond girl curse to star in Stephen Frears’s raucous, raunchy new comedy. Cath Clark hears about squeezing into outfits, her new Sloaney look and ‘Midsomer Murders’

Rising star Gemma Arterton left Rada three years ago. Since then, she has played a head girl (‘St Trinian’s’), a Bond girl (‘Quantum of Solace’) and a canny kidnap victim (‘The Disappearance of Alice Creed’) and been in a blockbuster or two (‘Clash of the Titans’, ‘Prince of Persia’). Now she’s the heroine of black comedy ‘Tamara Drewe’, Stephen Frears’s adaptation of Posy Simmonds’s comic strip. Newspaper columnist Tamara is forced back to the village where she grew up. Once an ugly duckling, she returns, post-nose-job, as a smouldering femme fatale, entangling a trio of admirers: indie-drummer, fit farmer and philandering crime novelist.

Tamara makes a memorably slutty entrance back in the village, wearing the shortest denim shorts ever, prompting the catty comment, ‘I hope they don’t give her thrush’. Did you have any say in the shorts?
‘That’s such a Daily Mail reader’s comment isn’t it? Those shorts. Ugh. I really wanted them to be culottes, more flattering on the bottom. But for that joke to work they had to be alarmingly tight and offensive to a woman. I was in Paris about a month ago, where the film is already out. There are these posters of me in those bloody shorts everywhere.’

The ‘Tamara Drewe’ graphic novel is much loved. Did you know it already?
‘No, I hadn’t even heard about it. At the start, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do the film. I really liked the script and I knew that I could do it but I had a little bit of apprehension. I’m not sure why. Then they sent me the comic, and that was the deal-maker. I’ve always loved Thomas Hardy [‘Tamara Drewe’ is loosely based on ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’] and I just fell in love with the comic. Posy is so clever. She did a drawing of me as Tamara. It’s in my bathroom: the front cover of the book but with my face. It’s brilliant.’

Stephen Frears said that he wouldn’t make the film without you. Did he tell you that?
‘It’s funny when he says things like that because he’s so bumbling. I remember when I met Stephen, I had read with his casting director. She’d phoned him to say that I should be Tamara. So I met up with them both and he said: “Oh yes, you’ll do.” He’d never seen me in anything. I was asking if I could please audition – or something! I wanted to make sure he knew he had made the right decision. A lot of us are quite close to our characters.’

You’re not like Tamara are you? She’s outrageous.
‘Not character-wise, no! But I drive a Mini in real life. She drives a Mini. Her light-heartedness, her freshness, the cheekiness – that was kind of the easy bit for me. And she’s a modern woman.’

You’ve done a lot of period work. Is it harder without the costumes? Do they tool you up?
‘You haven’t got anything to hide behind. Luckily I know someone who is Tamara Drewe: she had a nose job when she was 15, moved to the big city and became a success but she hasn’t really got any friends; she’s a real temptress but doesn’t have any respect for herself. So I had this really clear idea of Tamara.’

The film is a raucous black comedy with bonking and a dash of Agatha Christie. Very English. Was it hard to find the right tone?
‘It could have become like a really bad episode of “Midsomer Murders”. But Stephen is an expert on getting the tone right. I think he’s done an amazing job. I don’t think anybody else could get it right.’

Were you familiar with the country-living world of ‘Tamara Drewe’? Did you grow up on a farm somewhere?
‘Not at all. I grew up on a council estate in Kent. It’s funny, when I turned up on set in a Barbour jacket, corduroys and Wellingtons, with my hair all Sloaney, my husband was like, “Argh!”. We live in Battersea, quite close to Chelsea, so there is quite a bit of that around us. But where I grew up, no way!’

You have come a cropper in a lot of films: drowning in oil, kidnapped and handcuffed to a bed… Was it a relief that all you had to contend with for this film was a prosthetic nose?
‘I know. I was thinking there was going to be some kind of sticky end to Tamara Drewe. It’s refreshing not having to do a dying scene. They are always the eggy ones to do – you wake up and think: I’ve got to do the death scene today.’

Your first big part was as a Bond girl. Can it ever feel like a ball and chain?
‘Not for me. At the time, people talked about the curse of the Bond girl, saying I’d never work again. But that’s not happened – though I’m for ever going to be “Gemma Arterton, Bond Girl”. When I did “Alice Creed”, the director wasn’t sure if I was right for it because I’d been in a Bond movie. You have to just accept that and hope they give you a chance.’

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