By Amy West

Gemma Arterton turns 30 on Tuesday (2 February) and we can’t think of a better way to celebrate her birthday than to watch one of, if not all of her best films. From the star-studded The Boat That Rocked to children’s guilty pleasure St. Trinian’s, she’s appeared in a lot of titles considering she only really rose to fame less than 10 years ago.

She even played a Bond girl in the 2008 film Quantum Of Solace, so there’s bound to be something to suit everyone who wants to share in her special day.

Gemma Arterton turns 30 on Tuesday (2 February) and we can’t think of a better way to celebrate her birthday than to watch one of, if not all of her best films. From the star-studded The Boat That Rocked to children’s guilty pleasure St. Trinian’s, she’s appeared in a lot of titles considering she only really rose to fame less than 10 years ago.

She even played a Bond girl in the 2008 film Quantum Of Solace, so there’s bound to be something to suit everyone who wants to share in her special day. Read More

Gemma Arterton is about to play feisty royal mistress Nell Gwynn in the West End — and a birthday today is not the only thing they have in common, she tells Nick Curtis

“She’s great fun, witty and fresh and real: she sort of represents this new wave of feminism without being stampy and shouty. She says it how it is.”

Gemma Arterton is describing Nell Gwynn, who she is playing in the West End transfer of Jessica Swale’s play about the orange-seller who became Charles II’s lover, stepping into the dainty shoes originally filled by Gugu Mbatha-Raw at Shakespeare’s Globe. Of course, the description pretty neatly fits Arterton herself, who also shares both an earthy sexuality with Swale’s seductive heroine and a birthday: Arterton turns 30 today while Gwynn would be 366.

The actress grumbles good-humouredly that she’ll mark her milestone with the technical rehearsal for the play after three short weeks’ rehearsal, and won’t be able to celebrate with her family in Gravesend or her boyfriend, assistant director Franklin Ohanessian, in Paris until after the run.

She had even been planning a bit of downtime after a hectic 2015. First she did her first all-singing, all-dancing role in Made in Dagenham, which won her an Evening Standard Theatre Award last year for Newcomer in a Musical, but which sadly closed after six months. (Arterton is still “the most proud of that out of everything I have done” and mourns its passing). Then she made four films back-to-back. But when she read Swale’s script it was a “no brainer”. The part of Nell, like the woman herself, was “irresistible”. Read More

Back in August, when we were still offline due to change of host, Gemma was featured in Stylist Magazine. Now the scans have been – finally – added to the gallery. She talks mostly about Gemma Bovery, enjoy :)

LONDON BURNING – “I grew up on a council estate, and when you grow up somewhere like that, it’s hard to shake it off. Even when you’re placed in über-glamorous circumstances, you can’t quite fit in. I’m so grateful to have come from that, because I can see the disparities between the two! Well, to me the glamorous side is not real at all. I enjoy going to film festivals, I enjoy going out for nice dinners and living the nouveau-riche life, because that’s what I am, nouveau-riche. Yet it’s not where I feel comfortable. I guess that’s why I live in south London still. Even though I live in a nice place, I still can be five minutes down the road and I’m in Brixton or wherever. I don’t think I could ever live anywhere that was manicured because I’d find it very uncomfortable…

How weird is this: [my first job was in] the Warner Bros shop! And then I ended up working on Warner Bros films. I made my first film when I was 22… I remember one day I was serving a guy in the shop that was James Bond’s stunt double, and he was boasting to everyone. And then, five years on, you’re working on the same thing. It’s weird. Life is full of things like that.“

(source)

It’s good to be back!!! Unfortunately, last August our host which had gloriously hosted us for over 7 years told us on a very short notice that they’d close doors. We were left without an online home and had to find another one. When we did, we couldn’t make the old thumbnails show up properly. You’ll probably notice that. But we decide to reopen the site anyway, while we try to fix the old thumbnails and other issues that we might have to deal with. So, please, bear with us and wish us a warm welcome back and keep coming back for your Gemma Arterton fix! In the meantime, I’ve added scans from 2015 that weren’t in our gallery yet. Enjoy! :D

GALLERY LINKS:
– Magazine Scans > Scans from 2015 > TV Extra (UK) – August 16, 2015
– Magazine Scans > Scans from 2015 > Hello! (UK) – August 24, 2015
– Movies & Television > The Voices (2014) > Related Clippings > Trois Couleurs (France) – March 2015
– Movies & Television > Gemma Bovery (2014) > Related Clippings > Movies By Mills (UK) – August 2015
– Movies & Television > The Voices (2014) > Related Clippings > Deadline (Germany) – September/October 2015
– Magazine Scans > Scans from 2015 > Square Mile (UK) – November 2015
– Movies & Television > Gemma Bovery (2014) > Related Clippings > Coolture “Y” (France) – August 2014

LONDON EVENING STANDARD – The English actress made her screen debut in St Trinian’s in 2007, before playing Bond girl Strawberry Fields in . She has since played Tamara Drewe in the big-screen adaptation of the comic strip and starred in the musical Made in Dagenham at the Adelphi Theatre last year. She lives in Battersea.

FASHION
My Valentino sweater is the most extravagant jumper I’ve splashed out on, but I rarely leave the house without it. It’s got a red heart on it and is embroidered with the words ‘These eyes are the eyes of a woman in love’. In summer, I pair it with shorts, and I always match my shoes to my sweater.

TECH
I like astrology. I subscribe to Susan Miller’s Astrology Zone app for an in-depth forecast every day. Today’s was: ‘Wanting to do renovations to your house? Now is a really great time.’ And you know what? I’m building a roof terrace.

DÉCOR
There’s an amazing photograph of my younger sister Hannah and me that I always have in my dressing room. I’m six in the photo, and we’re sitting beneath Glastonbury Tor wearing multicoloured dungarees and meditating with crystal balls on our heads. We’d camp at the bottom of the hill every year, outside the festival season.

MUSIC
I’m a glam rock girl — T Rex’s ‘Get It On’ never fails to have me dancing around the room — but I also love a bit of late 1970s punk or UK hip-hop. The Clash and David Bowie also do it for me.

FITNESS
Running is my workout of choice. I do Pilates because my best friend is a fantastic instructor. I’m lucky to be sent sportswear by all the different labels.

BOXSET
Game of Thrones is completely addictive, even if the acting isn’t great. My favourite character was Charles Dance’s Tywin Lannister, who was so evil but so compelling. Spoiler alert: he’s not my favourite actor in it any more. What a way to go…

DRINK
Jason Vale is the Juice Master, everyone knows that. He’s got a smoothie called Turbo Charge to which I add a ton of ginger to make it really spicy. In the morning I knock back ginger on its own — I swear it got me through to summer without getting sick.

CULTURE
You wouldn’t believe how excited I am about the return of Twin Peaks. I’m having weird David Lynch-style dreams at the moment and I’ve been trying to write them down. I quote him more than anyone else: ‘We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experience is a narrowing of the imagination’ is a favourite.

BOOKS
Angela Carter’s writing is very much how I see the world: that fantastical, grotesque feminist vision. I was obsessed with Nights at the Circus when I first read it.

(source)

METRO.US – With “Gemma Bovery,” Gemma Arterton joins Kristin Scott Thomas on the list of English actors who can speak French in French movies. In the film, she plays an Englishwoman who moves to the south of France and attracts the attention of an academic-turned-baker (Fabrice Luchini), who thinks she’s reminiscent of the hero of Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary.” Arterton herself fared better on her trip to France, which is also a country that offers better roles for women than the fare she was being offered in Hollywood. Indeed, after breaking through with roles in “Quantum of Solace,” “Clash of the Titans” and “Prince of Persia,” she has segued into almost exclusively smaller and more challenging films.

Had you been looking to do a film in France?
No, it just came by chance. It really changed my life, this film. I didn’t speak French before, and I was seduced by the fact that I’d have to learn French in a very short amount of time. So I learned French and now I speak fluent French. I moved over to Paris, and now I live between London and Paris. And I met my boyfriend, who’s French. The whole thing is because of this movie. [Laughs] Now I have a French agent, and I and I’m starting to work in France in French-language movies, which is a dream for me. They make many more movies in France than in the U.K., and many more of my type of movies. This whole new door is open. I wasn’t looking for it to open.

What method did you use to learn French so quickly?
I did this intensive two-week, really hardcore French course, where you stay in a family’s house. I would have breakfast and dinner with them, and then do eight hours of one-on-one French lessons. When I went there I didn’t speak any French. When I left I had enough in me to start speaking French to people.

It must be strange, at first, to act in a language you’re new to.
At the point of shooting I was only six months into learning French. I wanted to be able to improvise between the lines. I was working with an actor who was incredibly erudite and lingual: Fabrice Luchini, who is known for going off on massive tangents about literature. I wanted to have a modicum of comprehension with him, even though most of the time I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I would just nod and smile. When you learn another language you have to learn it physically rather than mentally. When you speak in a language or an accent that you’re not completely secure with, you often to it in a different voice. I know that when I speak French I speak a little higher. The director, Anne Fontaine, has had experience with American actors who had to learn French. They had to learn it phonetically and rhythmically. She said you need to walk around with the text, to do something physical, like washing up, while you’re learning it, so you can be comfortable with it on the day.

Have you gotten to the point where you can read “Madame Bovary” in French, which is often said, more than other translated novels, to be the ideal way to read it?
I haven’t! Maybe I should now. My reading is pretty bad. All I read in French is magazines and newspapers. Newspapers are good because you learn new vocabulary. But I haven’t read a proper French novel. Maybe I’ll start with “Madame Bovary.” [Laughs]

This is your second film based on a work by Posy Simmonds, who also did a twist on “Far from the Madding Crowd” called “Tamara Drewe.” Both lead characters in “Madding” and “Bovary” are proto-feminist icons too.
I think Madame Bovary is much more provincial. She’s definitely not as confident as Bathsheba [Everdene, “Madding”’s protagonist]. She is rather banal, Madame Bovary. Towards the end she finds who she is and who she wants to be. She goes on many adventures to try and find that. That happens with a lot of young women. Do not get married young! [Laughs]

France seems to be much more open than most national cinemas at depicting women as having healthy sexual appetites.
I think it’s dodgy ground to walk on. Depicting a woman as sexually promiscuous is not the way that people want to depict women, generally. I think we want to make sure women are in check. Women aren’t like that. In France there are so many movies with women in it, doing things their own way. That’s very French. The idea of mistresses and lovers is much more regular in France. In the U.K. we tend to be a little bit more conservative. [Laughs] We’d rather not talk about that kind of thing. Even when I did “Tamara Drewe,” which is a similar vibe, I didn’t even know if I liked her when I first read it. I was like, “This is a woman who sleeps around with all these different guys.” But then, all the guys are also sleeping around. All the guys she sleeps with are also shagging other people. But no one ever talks about that. They always talk about the woman like she was a slut. That’s funny and strange.

You’ve done your share of big Hollywood films, though over the last couple years you’ve done smaller, artier fare. It doesn’t seem like there are too many interesting roles for women in Hollywood.
No, there’s not. I mean, it’s sad. And if there are it’s always going to go to the Oscar winner or the very, very famous person. But even those parts aren’t that interesting. [Laughs] The woman is usually the accessory. That’s why I started my production company. I have this list of all these amazing women that no one’s ever heard about. I think it’s the beginning of a new era for women in cinema. Every interview you read with a female director or a female actor, they’re talking about that. It’s only a matter of time before people put things into their own hands and do it themselves. Personally, I can get the most interesting part in the theater. Why can’t I do that in film? In Ibsen and Shakespeare, most of the interesting parts are for women in their 40s. Why isn’t that translating in cinema, in Hollywood?

I feel like every time I talk to a female director or female actor I’m always asking about this, especially since Patricia Arquette’s Oscar speech.
It’s great, though. It’s such a movement now. It’s exciting now because there’s new producers — women who are producing and even men who are saying they want to tell [women’s stories]. A producer I’ve worked with a lot [Stephen Wooley], who just produced “Carol,” most of his films are about women. He develops scripts with strong women. That’s what he does. I think that’s brilliant. We need more people like that.

(source)