Up-and-coming British actress Gemma Arterton is more than just the pretty face who appeared on screen earlier this year in “Clash of the Titans” and “Prince of Persia.” A graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, with years of experience on the London stage, the 24-year-old actress tackles the most demanding role of her film career in the new thriller “The Disappearance of Alice Creed.” Arterton portrays the title character, a kidnapping victim held hostage by a pair of ransom-seeking thugs (played by Eddie Marsan and Martin Compston).
Q: Talk about both the emotional and physical challenges of this role.
A: It was difficult being tied up during so much of the film, but I tried to use that discomfort to my advantage. It helped me to feel that restriction, and it actually informed my performance. It made me feel quite anxious and tense. The physicality of the situation affected me emotionally, too, in terms of acting the character. I've never been in a situation in my own life where I've been terrified like that. As an actor, you can usually draw on things like being in love or angry or jealous, those sorts of basic human emotions that help you portray a character. Here, I couldn't draw on any of my own experiences. I was worried about having to conjure it all up from some unknown place inside me, but it's just what I needed. This was like a big acting lesson for me because I felt like I hadn't really stretched myself in my last few movies.
Q: Had you known or worked with either of the other actors in the film?
A: I knew their work, but I'd never worked with them. Working with them in this kind of intense situation, it was nice to be reminded of how, when you're giving each other your all, you're not just acting on your own. All three of us come from similar working-class backgrounds. We have the same realistic view of acting, as opposed to some romantic view of it. We've all worked really hard to get where we are, and there were no egos involved.
Q: How does working on a smaller-scale movie like this differ from big studio movies?
A: It's completely different, and you have to adjust your game accordingly. You still need to have a certain acting technique, but the biggest thing is keeping your creative juices flowing in a different way. You spend more time on the set, waiting around longer between camera setups. We only had four weeks to make "Alice Creed," so we were in a constant state of creativity. It's very liberating not to worry about anything but the scene you're playing. I didn't have to worry about looking good, which was nice, and none of us had to worry about whether this movie would open No. 1 at the worldwide box office, you know? It was like, what the heck, just go for it. We were all just making something we really believed in, without any commercial expectations or concerns about whether it might appeal to mainstream audiences.
Q: What do you get out of film work that you don’t get from working on the stage?
A: I think it's important to do both. I went to RADA, but for all the extensive stage training they give you, students leave and go out into the world with absolutely no knowledge of how to act on screen, which is where the majority of the work is. That mucked me up a little. I knew how to articulate feelings theatrically -- playing to the back row of a theater -- but I still don't feel like I've managed to get my head around how to modify my performance on film. Theater acting tends to be more exaggerated, while film acting is more internalized. Theater comes more easily and naturally to me because I've always done it and feel more confident and experienced at it than I do with movies. Hopefully, that will change with more time.
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