If I were Tamara Drewe’s title character, a newspaper columnist who shakes up the English village of her youth when she returns from London with a tiny new nose and a big new attitude, I would write that Gemma Arterton led me into her hotel bedroom with the obvious goal of seducing me. But I’m not, so I’ll admit that Arterton—who stars as Tamara in Stephen Frears’s new film, which had its Cinema Society premiere last night—was only trying to find a quiet place to conduct our interview.

Jenni Miller: True or false: writers are totally crazy.

Gemma Arterton: True! But I think that anyone that’s creative is a bit nuts…. I’m not a writer but I do know a lot of writers, and I also know a lot of songwriters, and one particular person I know, she dramatizes her own life so that she can write a song or something about it. And I thought, That is so what Tamara does.

So did playing a journalist give you a different insight to the journalists you deal with?

When you’re an actress, you meet lots of journalists, and sometimes you get really cross with them and then sometimes you love them, and I think actually playing one, you realize that they are real people with their own problems and their own lives. But writers get a higher ground, especially journalists. No matter what you do as a person, they can write whatever and that’s going to get published. So to play somebody that actually is completely out of control of her own life but who can control what is read, what is put out there, is interesting.

Speaking of journalists having the upper hand as far as writing whatever they want, you’ve been really frank in the press about being portrayed as a sex object. Do you ever get any blowback?

I’ve only been out for three years, so I’m learning very quickly how things work. I’m very outspoken, and I do have sort of feminist tendencies. Sometimes things are written in a way that is not how you said it, or it gets blown up. So yeah, I do get told: Don’t try to fight that battle. You’re never going to win it. But I still think then it needs fighting! It frustrates me that we are expected as women to just shut up and get on with it. Although you have to be careful, and this is what I’ve learned, the way that you say something—they’ll take a certain portion of it and that will become the headline, even though you were talking about something completely different. So I get it; it’s best to not go there, but I can’t really help myself sometimes.

Well, I support that.

Yeah, I think it’s good to speak your mind, as long as you’re not being specifically rude to somebody—and I would never do that, I’m not a name-dropper—but I just think it’s good to say what’s going on. And actually, often my point is made by what is written. In the way that it’s written, my point is made, because it’s a sexist way of writing, you know—a sexist opinion. So often someone will say, “You should shut up, bitch, just get on with your job.” That’s exactly what I’m trying to say.

Or: You have nothing to complain about. You’re so beautiful. How dare you?

It’s not about the parts that I play, but it’s the way that you’re treated as a person when you’re playing them. That’s what my point was. Of course, it was related to the fact that I play people wearing hot pants, but that’s not my point. I could play a hooker, but I still don’t expect to be treated like one, you know? But it’s an ongoing battle, and it’s never going to be won. I read something that Sigourney Weaver said the other week that was really brilliant. Obviously she’s played iconic females, feminist females—and she just said, The strongest thing you can do is to not say anything and then prove everybody wrong. It’s like, Yeah, you’re right, Sigourney! Maybe I’ll just do that and stop being so petulant.

Speaking of Sigourney, there’s—

I know, all these rumors [about Arterton starring in an Alien prequel]. Yes. Um, well, no, I have met Ridley Scott, but I don’t know what it was for, and of course everyone’s talking about that, but he’s also got lots of different things he’s developing. So that was it. I’ve met him. That is it.

You are contractually bound to do Clash of the Titans 2, though, right?

That’s right.

That did well financially but … maybe not so much critically.

Yeah.

Is that difficult, to say, Well, now I have to go do this again …

All actors do it unless they’re really, really, really lucky and brilliant. If I do those movies, it means I can go and do the other stuff that I’m really passionate about, and it is tricky because those are the sort of movies that can feel out of control. It’s [a big] studio, so you, as a person making that movie, you don’t really have any input or say as to how it’s going to end up. I mean, on the last one, it was rewritten so much, and my character especially took the brunt of it. Hopefully next time it won’t be so much like that, but that’s one of the kind of things you just have to accept. You can’t always do the perfect role every single time.

People report that you’re leaving Hollywood. Is that true?

No, I don’t actually know where that came from.

Journalists.

Yeah, but I think maybe it was because I said I’m doing a play. Some people are like, She’s leaving us forever! No, actually. I’m doing a play and it’s taking me three months, and then next year is my grafting year, because I haven’t made a movie this year.

Grafting?

Working.

O.K., just making sure that I have it right in my transcript. Because I don’t want to misquote you.

Yeah, I know. Which is often done.

Source