NEW STAR:IT'S JUST AS WELL Gemma Arterton turns out to be good chat. Following our interview, I spent five days scowling beneath an invisible cloud of volcanic ash before, convinced that the air age had permanently ended, resorting to trains and boats to eventually make my way home from London.
Arteron is, thank goodness, a lively conversationalist. Curled up in the penthouse of a Covent Garden members’ club the unpretentious actor gabbles happily as if we’ve known one another for years. “I am still getting used to this,” she says. “I have been in films for a while, but I only started getting lead roles recently. So this whole interview thing is new.”
If you don't know whom we're talking about, you can't have been near a cinema or a newsagent recently. Now 24, Arterton gained a class of fame as a saucy schoolgirl in the 2007 remake of St Trinian'sand, a year later, as a glamorous operative in the Bond film Quantum of Solace. Over the last year, however, she has become properly ubiquitous.
Wander into your local Enormoplex and you can catch her in the noisy 3D epic Clash of the Titans. On the way to the concessions counter, you may pass a huge cardboard Gemma as the princess in an upcoming video-game adaptation Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Next week she appears in a tasty little British thriller called The Disappearance of Alice Creed.
Meanwhile, Arterton stares moodily from a dozen magazine covers. “Oh yes, with my slightly closed eyes,” she says. “I honestly can’t describe what this experience is like. When I do anything related to press, I have to put on a persona. I think I am natural in interviews. But I am not comfortable with shoots. I play a part on the red carpet. I play a part before the photographer. Sometimes, when I see myself on a magazine, I don’t recognise that it’s me.” Arterton remembers an excruciating moment when her dad happened upon a saucy shoot she did for GQ magazine. Her chest tightened as he began leafing through ever more revealing snaps. “I yelled: ‘Oh don’t look at that.’ But I had to just make it clear to him that I was playing a part.”
She says she’s pretty much herself when conducting interviews and I believe her. Wearing a black frilly thing, her hair in a firm bob, she curls herself into her seat and flings answers gaily at the ceiling, the windows and the sleek furniture.
She may have been to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, but she is certainly not scarily posh. Indeed, it transpires that Arterton comes from a fairly ordinary corner of Kent. Raised in Gravesend by her single mum, who worked as a cleaner to make ends meet, she claims her family is full of people who had talent "but never did anything about it". The exception was her mother's cousin who, under the name Wreckless Eric, became an icon of the post-punk era and wrote a durable anthem entitled (I'd Go the) Whole Wide World.
Her parents, who did not live together when she was young, must be proud of their little girl. Despite the anvil drag of the “Bond girl” label (few actresses have used such roles as a catapult towards greater things), Arterton has become one of the most photographed women of her era.
"I am from a very normal background. As I say, nobody had actually done anything like this before in my family," she says. "Then the Bond film came and my parents were very excited but, you know, they got over it very quickly. They only got round to seeing Clash of the Titansthe other day. My mum's really not that into films. They are proud, but quietly proud."
What was Rada like for a working-class kid, I wonder. It’s been several generations since the likes of Tom Courtenay and Albert Finney re-introduced regional accents to the British theatre, but that distinguished college continues to sound like an intimidatingly proper establishment. Can it still be full of men in Astrakhan coats clutching teddy bears?
“I am occasionally told that I am the common girl who doesn’t fit in to the acting world,” she laughs. “But Rada was not like that at all. It was very mixed. There were Oxford graduates. There were some la-di-dah types. But there are ordinary sorts like me, too. It really is more mixed than you might think.”
Since graduation, Arterton has not had to endure any protracted periods of eating pilchards from the tin while waiting for that walk-on part in The Bill. Indeed, she made her stage debut at the Globe Theatre before graduating. The call to appear in St Trinian'scame when she was 20 and she has worked steadily ever since. (Mind you, considering how long Keira Knightley has been on our screens, it comes as a surprise to learn the two women are the same age.)
Arterton now lives comfortably in London and is about to get married to Stefano Mioni, a stunt-driver whom she met on the set of Quantum of Solace. Life sounds quite fabulous.
“The only place I feel that attitudes have changed to me is in Gravesend,” she laughs. “There, because everyone thinks they know me, they will come up to me in the pub and say hello. It’s nice, but it can be a bit much when you just want a drink.”
She has already had one crack at a holy icon of English literature. Two years ago, as her star was gradually emerging over the celebrity horizon, She was cast in the lead role of the BBC's latest adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles. The series got mixed reviews but most critics were agreed that Arterton was terrific as the doomed heroine.
"That was hard work. It was cold all the time," she laughs. "You have no idea how nerve-wracking it is playing a character like that. You really, really don't want to fuck it up. But we were really proud of that. It's not perfect, but it is very true to the book." Arterton is, as you will have gathered, impressively frank. Two years ago, she got in trouble for prematurely revealing elements of the plot for Quantum of Solace. Here she is glibly admitting Tess was "not perfect". She slips in a few more indiscrete asides when discussing The Disappearance of Alice Creed. It's not that she has any complaints about the film itself. Directed and written by the relatively inexperienced J Blakeson, this twisty, low-budget thriller finds Arterton playing a rich girl who gets kidnapped by two barely competent opportunists.
“A lot of people cautioned me against doing it because it is tough stuff. But when I met J, he reassured me he was going to cast it properly and that it could be a brilliant, risky film.”
Her indiscretions come when she compares this cannily balanced, shoestring production with the more showy films – Clash of the Titansand Prince of Persiain particular – that bookend its release.
"It's funny. I thought I would start out making smaller films like Alice Creedand then do the bigger films, but it worked out the other way," she says. " This is really hard work. This is why I do this job: the chance to really stretch yourself, to do something you don't know you can do. I mean, with that other stuff, most girls could strut their stuff through those."
Okay. But they asked her rather than the other girls. So, she must have some special gifts or talents. "Look that stuff is not rocket science. Don't get me wrong. Being in one of those big films is fun. You are aware you're in a proper movie. This is how you imagined movies would be when you first saw Star Wars. But it's definitely not as hard work as being in a film that's all about the acting. It's like comparing Radiohead and Aerosmith. One's all spectacle. The other's more intricate. But they are both great."
Now she has got herself on a roll, she goes on to confirm she never played the video game on which Prince of Persiais based.
“I couldn’t. I am terrible at video games and I am really competitive. And if I am not the best at something, I go absolutely crazy.”
She hasn’t played the video game that spawned her next blockbuster . . . She thinks acting in the bigger, noisier films “is not rocket science” . . . You always suspect actors think such things, but you never expect to hear them say as much. Maybe Gemma Arterton was worth braving the volcano for.
The Disappearance of Alice Creedis in cinemas from Friday
