STELLA MAGAZINE – Gemma Arterton is explaining the little-known art of ‘pistol-whipping’. ‘Sounds pretty mad, doesn’t it?’ says the 34-year-old star of Quantum of Solace, Clash of the Titans and Tamara Drewe with a peel of laughter. ‘Like a euphemism, or like you’re going to be slapping someone around the face with a pistol.’ And the term has been used in that way more recently, but in Matthew Vaughn’s action-packed prequel to the Kingsman spy sagas – set during the First World War – ‘it’s not that,’ she assures me. ‘It’s more flipping it up and around in the same way you see gunslinging being done in westerns.’

Not enough of Gemma’s pistol-whipping made it into the final cut of The King’s Man – which is ‘typical’, says the Kent-born actor. Having spent months being taught how to do something that cool by ‘a lovely ex-marine named Tony’, and having ‘practised it incessantly, it’ll inevitably end up being one second in the film. And there you are desperately asking everyone: “Wait – did you see that amazing pistol-whip thing that I did?”’

Gemma needn’t worry. If ‘pistol-whipping’ were a euphemism, then her character, Nanny Polly, pistol-whips her way through and around every character in the drama – from Ralph Fiennes’ Duke of Oxford to his son Conrad (played by star-in-the-making Harris Dickinson), to a toddler hanging on her apron strings. (The cast also includes Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Matthew Goode and Stanley Tucci.) Simply put: Polly’s a pistol-whipping, Yorkshire-accented Mary Poppins. ‘And not just a nanny,’ Gemma explains, ‘but a matriarch who runs everything. She’s the emotional anchor; everybody’s rock.’

Check in our gallery the beautiful photoshoot Gemma did for the magazine, together with scans from the issue! Enjoy :)