ES MAGAZINE – Gemma Arterton wasn’t among the estimated 100,000 people who took to the streets of London for the Women’s March in January, protesting the inauguration of Donald Trump. Instead the self-described ‘staunch feminist’ was stalking the stage that afternoon as the 15th-century warrior, martyr and feminist icon, Joan of Arc, at the Donmar Warehouse. ‘I did think, “the matinee isn’t until 1.30pm, so I could just go along early in my costume”. How f***ing cool would that have been?’ grins the 31 year-old, who won rave reviews for her performance in George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan. ‘But my first costume was ‘normal Joan’, before she cuts her hair off, before she’s in the armour — and I really wanted to go in my armour.’

We’re sitting in a French café in Brooklyn at the end of a week-long US trip for Arterton. I almost didn’t recognise the Gravesend-born former Bond girl when she first arrived — she chopped off her hair to play Joan, and is sporting a chic pixie crop. ‘I still catch myself in the mirror and go, “oh yeah, I’ve got short hair”,’ she says, giving it a tousle. ‘But when I wear a dress now, I look cool, rather than… pretty.’

The previous night she pulled off both with aplomb in a floor-length paisley number at the New York premiere of her latest film, Their Finest, which opens in the UK this week. Arterton plays Catrin Cole, a softly spoken secretary from Ebbw Vale hired by the Ministry of Information to script propaganda films during the Second World War. Based on a novel by Lissa Evans and directed by Lone Sherfig (who also directed the Oscar-nominated An Education) it has an undeniably feminist flavour. Catrin’s role is writing ‘the slop’ — women’s dialogue — for which, she’s told, she’ll get ‘no screen credit’, and won’t be paid as much as ‘the chaps’. She is based on a real-life Welsh screenwriter, Diana Morgan.

It’s not difficult to draw parallels between wartime propaganda film-making and latter-day Hollywood. While the language on set may be studiously PC now, Arterton has talked in the past about being the lone woman on a film, employed as ‘just the totty’ and ‘a piece of ass’, in big-budget blockbusters such as Prince of Persia and Clash of the Titans. In response, she set up her own production company, Rebel Park, in 2014 ‘to create more opportunities for female directors and female writers.’ In development are currently ‘one comedy, one really mad f***ed-up film, and a TV series’.

(Read the rest of the interview at the source)

Together with the interview, a beautiful new photoshoot of Gemma has been released! She looked ever so great. Check it in our gallery :)