I’m not just a piece of ass, says Gemma Arterton

Gemma Arterton, the young British actress who has made a name for herself in just two short years with a variety of films, has used an interview with GQ magazine to lambast the movie industry for sidelining women. Arterton, currently starring in Stephen Frears's Tamara Drewe, told the magazine that she has sometimes been treated merely as a "piece of ass" and that she had been tempted to walk away from major movies because "I want to enjoy the work I do". The 24-year-old actress would not say what these films were, although she has appeared in two blockbusters, Clash of the Titans and Prince of Persia, as a well as a Bond movie. Arterton's career began promisingly when she won her first professional role in Stephen Poliakoff's TV drama Capturing Mary while she was still at Rada. She made her stage debut at the Globe Theatre in the 2007 production of Love's Labour Lost. This was followed up with roles in the BBC's acclaimed Tess of the D'Urbervilles and ITV's Lost in Austen. But, since making the move to the big screen, many of her roles have been less demanding. She has played a groupie on The Boat that Rocked, a sexy schoolgirl in St Trinian's and a Bond girl. The role of Agent Strawberry Fields in 2008's The Quantum of Solace may have made her an international star, but it is also a role she has described as "secondary totty". In her interview with GQ she criticises "the twats out there [in the film world] who don't deserve to be in the positions they're in and treat people like shit". She says she has read too many of "the same" scripts, which leave female characters languishing in the background, or simply use actresses to help the male lead look good. Now that she is established, Arterton says, she wants to work "with people I get on with, that respect me, that don't just see me as a piece of ass. Which I have experienced as well". One of the hits at Cannes this year Tamara Drewe is Arterton's first lead role. So, given her thoughts about the treatment of actresses, why did Arterton pose in ultra-short cut-off denim hotpants in the film (above) and its publicity poster? Arterton answered this in an interview last week, when she told the Guardian that she had originally wanted to wear a pair of "lovely culottes". Yet the role required her to don "those fucking hotpants" as she calls them. This was to allow co-star Tamsin Greig to quip: "I hope they don't give her thrush". As for her next roles, Arterton is said to be in talks about starring in the forthcoming Kurt Cobain film All Apologies as well as director Michael Winterbottom's big screen adaptation of Martin Amis's London Fields. Yet she hasn't spurned blockbuster films altogether - she is also slated to appear in the sequel to Clash of the Titans.

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