Biography Of Gemma Arterton

Gemma Christina Arterton

 (born 2 February 1986) is a British actress. After her stage debut in Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost at the Globe Theatre (2007), Arterton made her feature-film debut in the comedy St Trinian's (2007). She portrayed Bond Girl Strawberry Fields in the James Bond film Quantum of Solace (2008), a performance which won her an Empire Award for Best Newcomer, and spy Pollyana "Polly" Wilkins / Agent Galahad in the action war film The King's Man (2021).

Arterton has appeared in a number of other films, including The Disappearance of Alice Creed (2009), Tamara Drewe (2010), Clash of the Titans (2010), Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010), Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013), Their Finest (2016), The Escape (2017), Vita and Virginia (2018), and Culprits (2023). She received the Harper's Bazaar Woman of the Year Award for acting in and producing The Escape. Her theatrical highlights have included starring in The Duchess of Malfi (2014), Made in Dagenham (2014), Nell Gwynn (2016), and Saint Joan (2017). Arterton was nominated for Olivier Awards for her work on both Nell Gwynn and Made in Dagenham, and she won the Evening Standard Theatre Award for the latter.

Since 2016, Arterton has run her own production company, Rebel Park Productions, which focuses on creating female-led content in front of and behind the camera.

Gemma Christina Arterton  was born on 2 February 1986  at North Kent Hospital in Gravesen  with polydactyly, a condition resulting in extra fingers which were removed shortly after her birth.  Her mother, Sally-Anne Heap, runs a cleaning business, and her father, Barry J. Arterton, is a welder  They divorced while Arterton was a young child, and she grew up on a council estate with her mother and younger sister, Hannah Arterton, who is also an actress.  Her matrilineal great-grandmother was a German-Jewish concert violinist. 

Arterton attended Gravesend Grammar School for Girls,  in Kent (now Mayfield Grammar School) and made her amateur stage debut in a production of Alan Ayckbourn's The Boy Who Fell into a Book. Her performance won her the best-actress prize in a competition at a local festival. 

At age 16, Arterton left Gravesend Grammar School to study Performing Arts at the Miskin Theatre at North Kent College, Dartford. She later studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, graduating in 2008

Arterton had her first professional role in Stephen Poliakoff's Capturing Mary while she was still at drama school. She made her stage debut as Rosaline in Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost at the Globe Theatre in London in July 2007, before graduating later that year.  She made her film debut in St Trinian's (2007) as Head Girl Kelly. 

In 2008, she worked alongside Daniel Craig in the James Bond film Quantum of Solace. Chosen from around fifteen hundred candidates, Arterton plays Bond Girl Strawberry Fields, in what is described as a "nice-sized role".  Arterton describes her character as "the thinking man's crumpet"  In the same year, she played the eponymous protagonist in the BBC adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Also in 2008, she played Elizabeth Bennet in the ITV serial, Lost in Austen. 

Her most controversial role to date was in the 2009 film The Disappearance of Alice Creed, in which her character is kidnapped and abused in several graphic nude scenes.  The role required her to be handcuffed to a bed and wear a ball gag in her mouth throughout.  She requested that she be left tied to the bed even when the camera was not on her to help her performance. She joked that the crew would put the ball gag back in if she was chatting too much. The film was well received, with Frank Scheck for The Hollywood Reporter noting, "Arterton… handles the rigorous physical and emotional demands of her role with great skill"

In 2015, Arterton starred as the titular lead in Gemma Bovery The film is a re-imagining of Gustave Flaubert's 19th century classic Madame Bovary directed by Anne Fontaine. Arterton learnt to speak French for the role, never having spoken the language previously.

In 2014–2015, Arterton starred in Made in Dagenham,  a stage musical about the Ford sewing machinists strike of 1968 concerning equal pay for women. Since its premiere on 5 November 2014 at the Adelphi Theatre in London,  she has publicly expressed her support for their cause.  She played a fictional character named Rita O'Grady and her performance received mixed reviews from critics. Simon Edge, for the Daily Express, complained of an "underpowered central performance from Gemma Arterton as Rita". However, Matt Trueman for Variety praised Arterton for her "all-out star turn"  and Paul Taylor, for The Independent, praised how "Arterton holds the show together beautifully". Despite the show closing after only five months, Arterton was nevertheless nominated for an Olivier Award for best actress in a musical, and went on to win the Evening Standard award for Newcomer in a Musical. 

In a 2015 interview with the Independent newspaper, Arterton stated that she was the director Jonathan Glazer's choice for the lead role in his movie Under the Skin Glazer, however, was forced to recast because Arterton was not famous enough for the film to secure financing

Michael Billington for The Guardian citing her "natural sparkle". For her performance, she was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Play.  In July 2016, she was named as a member of the main competition jury for the 73rd Venice International Film Festival.  Also in this year, Arterton was nominated for a BIFA for Best Supporting Actress for her role as the teacher Helen Justineau in The Girl with All the Gifts.  Her performance, a story set in a dystopian future world ravaged by a zombie pathogen, was generally well reviewed. 

In 2016, Arterton set up Rebel Park Productions to create female-lead and female-centric film and TV projects. She produced the well-received  short film Leading Lady Parts in support of Time's Up. The film starred Emilia Clarke, Tom Hiddleston and Gemma Chan and helped to raise awareness for the UK Justice and Equality Fund.  In the same year, she played one of four lead roles in Arnaud des Pallières' French language film Orpheline (Orphan), a role in which she exercised the French language skills she had acquired for her role in Gemma Bover

Arterton met production assistant John Nolan on the set of Quantum of Solace and they lived together in London.  In 2008, she had a relationship with Spanish stuntman Eduardo Muñoz, whom she met on the set of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. They lived together in a London flat for six months before the relationship ended. 

Arterton married Stefano Catelli in 2010. They separated in 2013, and, in August 2015, their divorce was finalised "by consent" at the Central Family Court in High Holborn. Arterton said she "never really believed in exchanging vows" and that she was not sure she would "want to walk down the aisle again"  In 2013, Arterton stated that she wanted to wait until she has accomplished something in the acting world before having children. 

In 2019, Arterton married actor Rory KeenanTheir first son was born in December 2022

SORUSE : wikipedia