Gemma Arterton Movies and Career Information

Gemma Christina Arterton (born 12 January 1986) is an English actress. She played the eponymous protagonist in the BBC adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and starred in the feature films St Trinian's, the James Bond film Quantum of Solace, Clash of the Titans, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Tamara Drewe. Arterton was born in Gravesend, Kent, the daughter of Sally-Anne (née Heap), a cleaner, and Barry Arterton, a welder. Arterton was born with polydactyly, and was brought up, along with her sister, Hannah Jane (born 1989, Gravesend), by their single mother on a council estate in Gravesend. Arterton's parents divorced when she was five; her father remarried in 1996. Arterton worked as a makeup salesgirl. After attending Gravesend Grammar School for Girls on Pelham Road in Gravesend, she took a performance arts course at The Miskin Theatre in Dartford (part of North West Kent College) and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art on a full grant. Arterton won her first professional role in Stephen Poliakoff's Capturing Mary, while she was still at drama school. Similarly, she made her stage debut as Rosaline in Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost at the