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Gemma Arterton already brushes off the critics and Bond Girl curse

02-Sep-2008 • Quantum Of Solace

The curse of the Bond girls is all too real, reports Times Online. So when Gemma Arterton first heard she had landed the role of Tess of the d’Urbervilles while still filming as Agent Fields in "Quantum of Solace", she literally screamed with joy.

“I thought, ‘Now I can show everybody I can act,’ ” she explains. “Although, in Bond, my character’s cool. She’s not a typical Bond girl: she’s funny, and real, and someone you could know from down the road. I’m quite tough — I have to arrest Bond at one point — but I go to bed with him, of course. So it is a good part.” And she looks conspiratorial. “But more than anything, it’s so that my grandkids can say their gran was a Bond girl. They’ll be, like, ‘Look at her now. You’d never know.’ ”

So, how is she preparing for the autumn of Arterton, when the legend her grandchildren will tell is created? “By going to Morocco and escaping from it all — I’m going to be in the depths of the souk. In a hut,” she giggles. “All the reviews will come out and I’ll be in a hut. Because I read every review, I can’t help myself. I’ve read so many bad ones now — people saying such horrible things about me as a person.”

Such as? “Oh my God, I have been told that I’m hideous, not to Bond-girl standard, that the only reason I’m working is because I must be shagging someone in the industry . . . I’ve read that everywhere. At first, I was like, ‘I’m an actress, I went to drama school, I did theatre, I’m serious.’ And then you go, ‘Ah, it’s some fat twat with no life who wrote that, so they can sod off.’ I’ll just do my work, which I seem to be getting, and see what happens.”



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