By playing complex, even unlikable characters, and setting up her own female-led production company, Gemma Arterton is changing the role of women on screen
Gemma Arterton was desperate as a teenager to leave her small home town in Kent to go and live in London. She remembers, in detail, the day she finally moved, driving up with her dad and her boxes, to stake her claim at independence and adulthood.
“It was a tiny flat in west London,” she says, her voice stripped of any hint of Gravesend. “My room was like a wine cellar underneath the pavement – I could hear people walking above me – and it had mould all over it. But I was just so happy!” Her dad cried at leaving her “in this disgusting little flat”. But Arterton was thrilled. She was a grown-up, she had her own space. “I got to hang out in the pub round the corner with all the students from Lamda and…” She pauses slightly, then says: “Oh, hello?!”