Gemma Arterton on Tamara Drewe, Underwritten Scripts and That 'Hot Pants' Poster

It's just a fluke of industry timing and economics that Gemma Arterton happens to have opened four films this year in the United States, the last of which -- Tamara Drewe -- begins its run today in limited release. It's stranger still that we won't see Arterton again for at least another year -- just when we'd gotten used to her charm, poise, talent and allure. What gives?

A few months after we'd met to discuss her turn as the title character in the twisty, terrific thriller The Disappearance of Alice Creed, Arterton and I convened round two to talk over Tamara Drewe, director Stephen Frears's adaptation of the celebrated graphic novel by Posy Simmonds. The actress once again plays the title character, a hotshot young newspaper columnist who stirs up a cauldron of lust, jealousy, gossip, regret, infidelity and not just a few mixed signals upon returning to her bucolic hometown in the English countryside. Artists vie for her affections, exes wonder what they've missed (especially since the nose job that turned ugly duckling Tamara into a brassy young swan) and a pair of teen girls conspire to destroy her life.

Part soap opera, part comedy of manners, and part decadent English romp, the film stands in fairly direct contrast to everything preceding it in Arterton's last year, including Alice Creed and two studio tentpoles (Clash of the Titans, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time). She spoke recently about crossing the 2010 finish line, her costumed set experiments, her philosophy about screenwriting, and how she plans to follow up in 2011.

Well, here we are again. You've been on the nonstop publicity circuit; how are you holding up?

I'm fine. This is the last bit. You know, you do a movie -- and I've done four moves this year -- but then they have separate release dates. So you're doing a junket in London, and then you're over here. This is like the neverending film, Tamara Drewe: It went to Cannes, then it went to Toronto and now... Well, anyway.

But a couple months ago you were saying how proud you were of it!

Yeah, I am proud of it. I'm proud of the whole film, because when I first read it I wasn't sure about it. I loved it; it's always a good sign when you're reading easily, when you don't want it to end. But I wasn't sure about how on Earth this was going to translate. I think if the wrong person directed it or the wrong cast were in it -- or any element turned out wrong -- it could have been the worst movie ever in the history of film. So I'm really proud of it for that in that respect. I honestly believe it's underestimated, and that Stephen's work on this film is completely subtle and brilliant. It's such a tricky tone to get right, but he does. Also, I have such great memories of it; I had such a great time on it. Even if it wasn't that great a movie, I'd still be proud of it.

As a member of that ensemble -- playing the title character -- obviously your performance went a long way to achieving that tone. How did you approach it?

Well, it was based on a cartoon, so the characters are kind of archetypal and could by quite caricatured. Each functions in a different way. The men are the archetypal men -- the protector, the father, the lover -- and then the girls are like this Greek chorus... You know? And my character was this weird character in the middle of it all. She's the catalyst. But even though it's called Tamara Drewe, it's not like she's the lead character. She's just the one who creates this mess. She's the root of the piece, but I didn't know how I was going to root it. She's quite flighty and flippant and promiscuous, obviously. So my big task was to contradict this frothiness and fun with her utter desperation and neediness and loneliness.

Stephen casts correctly and lets his actors do their jobs. He spends his time trying to make it all work rather than get the right performance out of somebody. He's not trying to get you to a certain character; that's your job. You're responsible for that. He just reins in and guides it in a way.

How?

There were the scenes with me and Dominic [Cooper, who plays Tamara's rock-drummer lover]. We were quite away from the rest of the film -- all the drama that happens in the rest of the house. We didn't see any of that, so we were quite fun and frivolous and playing around. Sometimes Stephen would tone it down a bit. That's how he managed. It's like spinning plates: He had to keep an eye on everything that was going on to get that perfect tone -- which I'm still not exactly sure what it was.

How did the book influence the character? Did Stephen regard it as the bible or just a source.

Oh, hugely. Hugely. If someone's given me this detailed character study, I'm going to use it. That was a godsend, actually. We did change certain elements of it, but we were quite faithful to things that were said, the way they dressed, they way they move. We even copied the landscape. But it was a godsend for Tamara. Tamara doesn't have anyone she relates to in the piece. She doesn't have any friends or anyone she can tell her inner thoughts to. In the book she does; she has thought bubbles and things like that. Luckily I could use that as a very, very detailed baseline, then use my own experiences and people I know. I based Tamara on someone I know as well, so it helped to work out her inner life. That's the bit that's very vague.

Your co-star Luke Evans said something interesting, which was that he believed there was a bit of your characters in all of you. Do you agree? What part of Tamara is in Gemma Arterton?

I think it's not her character that I'm similar to. It's probably the way she is with people. I think I'm most like her façade -- not her inner soul, not that dark bit. All the things that came naturally were the charming, fun things -- the sex-kitteny, bouncy, bubbly thing. But the inner world of Tamara is really desperate. She's having this identity crisis and she has no confidence whatsoever. That was the interesting bit for me, because that was the bit I needed to work out to play her.

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