Interview: Gemma Arterton

From out of nowhere she came – straight out of drama school to nab roles in a St Trinian’s remake, a James Bond film and the lead in Tamara Drewe.

That was 2008. Five years later Gemma Arterton, the welder’s daughter from Gravesend, is making huge strides towards being the kind of actor we don’t often see: the character player with sex appeal. Lots of sex appeal.

Playing a century-hopping vampire in Neil Jordan’s Byzantium has given Arterton her juiciest role to date – something to get her teeth into, so to speak. And what becomes clear in speaking with this garrulous 27-year-old is the awe in which she held Jordan.

Jordan is the Irishman who burst onto the scene 30 years ago with Angel, in which Stephen Rea takes on the IRA for gunning down an innocent deaf and dumb girl following a nightclub arson attack. In the years since his eclectic list of credits has included The Company of Wolves, Mona Lisa, The Crying Game, Interview with the Vampire, Michael Collins, The Butcher Boy and The Brave One.

For Arterton working with the likes of 63-year-old Jordan was like celebrating birthdays and Christmas all at once. Clearly this was more than just another job.

“Neil is one of my favourite directors,” says Arterton, managing not to gush. “I was introduced to Neil’s work when I was in this physical theatre company and we studied The Company of Wolves. We were making a piece about adolescence and, obviously, that whole film is about womanhood and coming of age and symbols of that. I was just amazed by it.”

Jordan has often dallied with fantasy, quasi-horror and the notion of womanhood. He’s also delved into the issues surrounding transgender romance.

He’s no stranger to the oddities of life. In Byzantium he considers the imbalance between two vampires, a mother and daughter, who have survived across the centuries to emerge into the new millennium.

“I wouldn’t say I was a horror fanatic,” reveals Arterton, “but, funnily enough, one of my favourite movies of all time is The Company of Wolves. I like fairytale horror and I like some 70s horror, but I’m not into slasher movies.”

She is at her best in Jordan’s tale of isolation, murder, control and mother love. She also gets to partner with Saoirse Ronan, 19, another breakthrough actress (from Atonement, The Lovely Bones and Hanna), who provides the humanity to Arterton’s dead-eyed killer hooker. Sam Riley and Jonny Lee Miller also appear.

Part of the mesmeric nature of Byzantium is provided by Arterton as the ageless vampire who keeps her daughter (Ronan) on a short, albeit invisible, leash. But there is a monster lurking in the shadows. And, after all, vampires are monsters at their most bestial.

Yet Arterton, as Clara, emerges as a cloying figure with a deep understanding of maternal responsibility. We might call it twisted, dark and borderline psychotic. Clara (and Arterton) calls it love. “I am a maternal person anyway and I always have that, especially with women,” says Arterton. “I was raised in a family where my mother was more like my sister and I was the mother in the family and I think I am like that with younger women.

“With Saoirse on set I would play with her hair and just hold her hand. But that was a good thing because I remember when I read the script I thought I sincerely cannot think of anyone else who could play this role apart from me. I would never say that normally but this has to be someone young enough but also someone who is maternal and physical and all those things.”

With its seaside setting, crumbling hotel, time-travel flashbacks and glimpses of seductive death – Ronan preys on elderly folk with a wish to shuffle off their mortal coil – Byzantium is like nothing Arterton has done before.

“I like that my other film that came out this year, Song For Marion, is the total opposite to this. My character [in that] is a bit geeky and not sexual at all. I do get these bombshell-type roles as well, which are always fun to play but I am trying to mix it up a bit.

“The way my career has turned out is that I will have three movies out in a year and then I’ll work on three movies for two years and then they will come out together.

“So it becomes these two separate things and I can spend a year doing press. 
Also, I do a lot of theatre so next year I’m hoping to spend part of the year back on the stage.” Can’t argue with a confident woman. Plus it’s always good to be busy.

Byzantium (15) is on general release from today.

Gemma’s path to movie stardom

Gemma Arterton was born in Kent on February 2, 1986, the daughter of Sally-Anne Heap, a cleaner, and Barry Arterton, a welder. She made her stage debut at Gravesend Grammar School in a production of Alan Ayckbourn’s The Boy Who Fell Into a Book, which had premiered at Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre in 1998. Arterton left school at 16 to attend the Miskin Theatre School in Dartford and from there went onto the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. By the time she graduated from RADA in 2008, she had already made her professional debut in Stephen Poliakoff’s Capturing Mary.