Gemma Arterton arrived as a Bond girl, funny for ten minutes, and has since made sure nobody could book her for that again. The hoarse voice and the physical way into a role are the constants; the films around them have been uneven.
Fi1m perspective
For ten minutes of Quantum of Solace (2008), Gemma Arterton is the best thing in a film that has very little else to smile about. Strawberry Fields is small, quick and dry, and Arterton plays her as if she knows exactly how silly the man she has been sent after is. Then the script uses her in a way we will not describe and calls it a tribute. We laughed at her, and when the film was done with her we felt it had been unkind, and we said so at the time. It is a poor part to judge anyone by, which is roughly what the rest of her career has been arguing.
She came to it fast. Amateur and student theatre in Kent, then RADA, and she was already working before she graduated in 2007: Capturing Mary (2007) on television for Stephen Poliakoff, and St Trinian's (2007) as Kelly, her first feature. Bond followed, and so did the label. Critics noticed early that the studio films were casting her for glamour and asking for little else, and they noticed too when she went looking for harder material, in The Disappearance of Alice Creed (2009) and, before that, as Tess Durbeyfield in the BBC's Tess of the d'Urbervilles (2008).
The stage is where the reputation has been built, and it is the part of her work the sofa cannot see. Made in Dagenham (2014), as Rita O'Grady, and Nell Gwynn (2016) are the ones people cite, and they are the reason she is spoken of as a musical and classical performer rather than a face from a car chase. On screen the through-line is the body first. "I've always approached roles from a physicality angle. That's always been my 'in', more than a character's backstory," she has said, and it fits what directors keep remarking on: the movement, and that low, hoarse voice, which is not the sound a studio expects from the girl in the second reel.
Since around 2016 she has run Rebel Park Productions with Jessica Malik and Jessica Parker, making female-led work, The Escape (2017) among it. The Girl with All the Gifts (2016), as Helen Justineau, and Funny Woman (2023) show the two ends she has been working between, the serious and the comic. The King's Man (2021), as Polly Wilkins, took her back to large-scale action on her own terms.
She is producing her own parts now, which is the sensible response to the ones she was offered.
Biography
Gemma Arterton is an English actress and producer. She trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, graduating in 2008, and made her professional stage debut as Rosaline in Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost at the Globe Theatre in 2007. Her feature film debut came the same year in St Trinian's.
Arterton is known for her roles as Strawberry Fields in Quantum of Solace (2008), Tamina in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010), Io in Clash of the Titans (2010), and Gretel in Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013). On television she appeared as Gerri in the Inside No. 9 episode 'Tom & Gerri' (2014). Her stage work includes Made in Dagenham (2014) and Nell Gwynn (2016), for which she received Olivier Award nominations; she won the Evening Standard Theatre Award for the former. Since 2016 she has run her production company Rebel Park Productions.
