Gallery Link: Photoshoots from 2010 > 2010: Globe and Mail

Call her the Not-It Girl.

For the past few years, the English actress Gemma Arterton, 24, has been on a trajectory that Hello! magazine dreams are made of: graduation from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts; roles in a gritty Guy Ritchie movie (Rocknrolla) and a frothy Richard Curtis one (Pirate Radio); starring as Elizabeth Bennet and Tess (of the D’Urbervilles) on British TV. Then (drumroll), the break that every starlet fantasizes about: playing Bond girl Strawberry Fields in Quantum of Solace.

Arterton rolled in flagrante with Daniel Craig, and yes, it was good for her. Hollywood and its megabudgets came calling. In Clash of the Titans, she got both a death and a resurrection scene – setting her up for the sequel, which she’ll film next year. In Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, she intoned mystical prophecies like a pro. It appeared that a new It Girl had arisen.

Except for this small hitch: “I don’t want to be an It Girl,” Arterton said in an interview in Toronto last week. “I didn’t plan to be in those types of movies. I’d always seen myself as a character actress. I felt, God, I’ve got to do something about this, otherwise I’ll forever end up being Princess of Something. Or not forever – you don’t have much shelf life that way.” My guess is that Megan Fox, whom Arterton resembles a little (light eyes, dark hair, full mouth), would concur. Continue…

Here’s one of the multiple new interviews with Gemma, this time with the L.A. Times.

“Hallo, it’s Gemma!” The voice on the line is musical as Gemma Arterton apologizes for the early hour, which the London caller imagines to be “something silly” in L.A. Although the cheery-sounding actress is most closely associated with big-budget popcorn movies (” Quantum of Solace,” “Clash of the Titans,” “Prince of Persia”), it’s her dark, twisty new thriller, “The Disappearance of Alice Creed,” which opens Friday, that more suits her tastes.

“People are always surprised when I say Lars von Trier and Michael Haneke are my favorite directors: ‘But you’re so pop!’ They’ve seen me in something very mainstream, which is not necessarily what I would go to see at the cinema myself,” says Arterton, whose musical tastes also run just to the side of mainstream, with Björk, Kate Bush and Radiohead being favorites. “‘Alice Creed’ came out in the U.K. between ‘Clash’ and ‘Prince of Persia,’ so it really challenged people’s perceptions of me.”

The big screen also tends to put the actress in tony surroundings, impersonating posh ladies (and the occasional immortal), another bit of cinema trickery not true to her life. Continue…

Another new interview, this time with New York Magazine. In it Gemma discusses the “Transformers 3″ rumors, dying in her movies and even lets slip her possible next movie. Let’s hope it works out for her!

In just the past two years, Gemma Arterton’s been drowned in crude oil (in Quantum of Solace), stabbed to death (Clash of the Titans), and dropped off a cliff (Prince of Persia) — is it any wonder she’s tired of blockbusters? “I don’t want to sound too dismissive of big movies because they are fun and you know, they’re business moves and you can’t just be artistic all the time,” she tells us. “But I am more interested in doing only smaller films right now.” Up next for Arterton: serious films with girls’ names in the titles! The Disappearance of Alice Creed, an indie thriller in which she plays the titular kidnapping victim, is out this week. In the fall, she’ll star in Stephen Frears’s Tamara Drewe. Vulture spoke with her during a recent visit to New York about Creed, the movie she hopes to make next (Luca Guadagnino’s Corsica 72), and why she’s not disappointed she wasn’t cast in Transformers 3.

When Megan Fox was fired from her role in Transformers 3 in May, it only took the Internet a few minutes to cast you as her replacement. Was that ever a possibility?
I didn’t even hear anything until I went to meet with another director for something else. He asked, “So, you’re doing Transformers?” I was like, “I’m sorry, what?”

Would you even have considered the role (which eventually went to Rosie Huntington-Whiteley)?
[Makes a face and shakes her head.] Megan Fox is such a sex symbol — I don’t feel comfortable playing a role like that. I don’t want to be about the way I look — my body, my hair, my makeup, all those boring things.

You’re certainly going in the opposite direction of that with Alice Creed.
I had just finished Prince of Persia and I wanted to shake it all off. Sometimes you do these popcorn movies — and even though a lot of credit needs to go to the people who make them — the dialogue is very wooden, stiff and they’re not hard work. [Alice Creed] was gut-wrenching and horrible, but ultimately really satisfying work. I needed to make sure I could act. And because of that, I got my next script, Corsica 72, to be directed by Luca Guadagnino [I Am Love]. I wasn’t supposed to tell you that, but it’s so fucking good — the best female role I’ve read. It’s about these two friends who become enemies and the reason they become enemies is because of this girl, and that’s me. I’m hoping it gets made. Continue…

ComingSoon.net has a lengthy interview with Gemma for “The Disappearance of Alice Creed” in which they discuss the following:

* How she found the script and what sold her on doing the movie
* How she convinced J. she was the right actress for the role
* How she knew J. could make a movie with three actors and two locations visually interesting
* Whether it worried her that J had spent so much time figuring out how to kidnap someone
* What the experience was like to be on such an intense shoot
* Whether or not she figured out some sort of backstory from before Alice’s kidnapping
* Whether she’s seen the movie with an audience
* The response the movie has gotten since the Toronto Film Festival
* Working with Stephen Frears on “Tamara Drew” (at this year’s Toronto Film Festival)
* Whether she’s heard anything more about starting on the sequel to “Clash of the Titans” but she says she hasn’t even heard about who is directing
And more!

Watch it below and find captures in the gallery!

Gallery Link: Screen Captures > 07.28.10: Coming Soon “Alice Creed” Junket

Here’s a new interview with CinemaBlend. In it Gemma discusses taking on the role of Alice Creed and briefly touches on her upcoming projects – can’t wait to get more details on those!

If you’ve only seen Gemma Arterton in big budget productions like Quantum of Solace, Clash of the Titans and Prince of Persia, you’re really missing out. Lucky for you, Arterton has something new hitting theaters on August 6th and while The Disappearance of Alice Creed may not have been showered with cash and effects like those other productions, it’s certainly far more powerful.

Arterton stars as Alice Creed, the poor young woman Vic and Danny (Eddie Marsan and Martin Compston) target in their kidnapping scheme. They confine their terrified victim to a room while they move along with their plan to make some quick cash at her expense. What Vic and Danny don’t know is that Alice has no intentions of being a good hostage and obeying their orders; she wants to fight back and survive.

For someone who only knows big budget Gemma, Alice Creed Gemma is absolutely going to blow them away. The actress was well aware of the stereotype she was developing and signed on for this project in an effort to show what she’s capable of and boy does she, but it wasn’t easy. During our recent chat, Arterton talked about the difficulties that came along with playing the role as well as the massive payoff and so much more. Check it all out in the interview below.

How’d you get involved? Did the just script come your way or did J approach you?
No, he didn’t. The script came my way because the casting director, Lucy [Bevan], is an advocate of mine, but J wasn’t really at the time because he’d only seen me in [Quantum of Solace]. She said to him, ‘Oh, you should meet Gemma,’ and he was like, ‘I don’t know. I don’t think she’s up to it. Is she? I mean, she’s a Bond girl.’ But Lucy said, ‘Just meet her.’ Anyway, so I came in and I didn’t know any of this, I just came in and I loved the script and I really wanted to do it and had to do this really demanding scene in the audition, which is just horrible to have to do that in the audition, but I did it.

He offered it to me on the spot and then when he told me that story months later, I said, ‘How could you have made such an assumption?’ He said, ‘Well, you know.’ I said, ‘Fair enough.’ That’s the reason I did the movie as well, because I had an idea that people are thinking that I couldn’t do this sort of movie and I needed to test myself. Until then if I was going up for stuff it was always the girl who is in love with the guy, the girl who is hot, the girl who is oh whatever, no substance, no interest. And then this one came along and I was like, wow. First of all, she’s a woman, she’s not just a girl and she’s flawed and complex and she’s kind of like an animal in this film and it would require some acting. [Laughs] But also, more than the role, it was the film itself. I just loved the story. For a British film as well it was so tight and it felt European, French. It felt like a movie I would go and see. My favorite directors are like [Michael] Haneke and [Lars] von Trier. It had that kind of feel. Continue…