Gemma Arterton Biography
Gemma Arterton was born on February 2, 1986, at North Kent Hospital in Gravesend, England. She was born with polydactyly, a condition that resulted in extra fingers, but a doctor removed the extra fingers shortly after her birth.
Along with her sister Hannah Arterton, Gemma attended Gravesend Grammar School for Girls, where she discovered her passion for acting.
She made her amateur stage debut in a local production of Alan Ayckbourn’s The Boy Who Fell into a Book, which won her the best actress prize in a competition at a local festival.
At the age of 16, Gemma Arterton left Gravesend Grammar School to attend acting college at the Miskin Theatre at North Kent College in Dartford. She later studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), graduating in 2008.
During her time at RADA, she had her first professional role in Stephen Poliakoff’s Capturing Mary. Gemma Arterton’s big break came in 2007, when she made her stage debut as Rosaline in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost at the Globe Theatre in London.
She later made her film debut in St Trinian’s (2007) as Head Girl Kelly. A year later, Gemma Arterton was cast in the James Bond film Quantum of Solace, playing Bond Girl, Strawberry Fields. She also played the eponymous protagonist in the BBC adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Elizabeth Bennet in the ITV serial, Lost in Austen, and had a controversial role in the 2009 film The Disappearance of Alice Creed.
Gemma Arterton has appeared in many other films, including Clash of the Titans, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, and Tamara Drewe. In 2014, she took the title role in John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, the inaugural production at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, the new indoor theatre at Shakespeare’s Globe. In 2015, she starred as the titular lead in Gemma Bovery, and in 2017, she took on the role of Joan in Josie Rourke’s interpretation of George Bernard Shaw’s classic story Saint Joan.
Gemma Arterton is not only an actress but also a producer. In 2016, she set up Rebel Park Productions to create female-lead and female-centric film and TV projects. She produced the well-received short film Leading Lady Parts in support of Time’s Up. In 2018, Arterton produced and co-created The Escape, a largely improvised film about a mother struggling with the breakdown of her marriage.
In her personal life, Gemma Arterton has been married twice. She married Stefano Catelli in 2010, but they separated in 2013, and divorced in August 2015. In 2019, she married actor Rory Keenan, and the two had their first child, who was born in December 2022
