Movies Features

Gemma Arterton gets kidnapped with The Disappearance of Alice Creed

By Anne Brodie Aug 4, 2010, 14:22 GMT

Two men - one in his twenties, the other nearer forty, both intensely focused on the task at hand - line the inside of a transit van with plastic. Shopping, they buy a drill, a mattress, and other supplies.  In a small flat they assemble a bed for the mattress and staple foam insulation and board to the walls and windows of a bedroom. Then, their meticulous preparations complete, they kidnap ...more

British rising star Gemma Arterton has a made her name in elegant, big budget films like The Prince of Persia, Clash of the Titans and Quantum of Solace, but she’s about to change everything we thought we knew about her. 

The 24 year old cool, brainy beauty is going downmarket in J Blakeson’s violent kidnap drama The Disappearance of Alice Creed - a violent kidnap thriller. 

Gemma Arterton in Clash of the Titans

Arterton and her abductors, played by Eddie Marsan and Martin Compston, are the only players in the film, and 95% of the action takes place in a sealed room.  Arterton’s titular character is abducted, blindfolded, stripped, tied, and held by two desperate men. 

The scenes of her abduction are disturbing but Arterton says she wasn’t bothered:

“It’s not me at all when I watch it.  It didn’t even feel that awkward.  It’s weird in a room with people and they see you.  It was more uncomfortable for the boys than for me because I prepared myself for it.  As soon as I read the script I started preparing myself, but the boys didn’t know what they were going to feel until they were there.  For a guy to tie a girl up and abuse her and cut her clothes off, they found it really hard to do.  They felt they were disrespecting me.”

“But I was the one, in a way, that was the most empowered in the making of the film, if I said stop, it would stop, and when I said go they would go.  I kind of commanded the set.  But they were treading on eggshells.  It was a totally different dynamic on the set than in the film.  There were scenes where Martin found it really disturbing and had to leave the set because he couldn’t deal with it, I was fine.”

Arterton says she created a back story for Alice, but in the end it didn’t help in the visceral reality of shooting the scenes.  She says all the history she created went away when the physical work kicked in. 

Gemma Arterton in The Prince of Persia

Playing Alice as the victim came naturally for Arterton, who credits her own common sense and instincts to make it believable.

“She excels in a heightened situation.  She has drive and is headstrong.  She has the fight or flight reaction throughout the whole movie, and can’t deal with it properly until afterwards.  She becomes quite feral in her instincts.  Actually that was one of the most pleasurable things to act.  It was fast and furious, and there was no room for error.  Some of my favorite scenes are when you know the characters are lying.  It was so much fun, you could be playful and decide to reveal whether you’re lying or not.  It’s an extreme situation.”

Arterton has made two smaller films since making The Disappearance of Alice Creed, the English rural comedy Tamara Drewe, which is scheduled to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, a comedy western called In with the Outlaws and then she returns to blockbuster country for Clash of the Titans 2, due out in 2012.

It pays to be versatile.

Gemma Arterton in Quantum of Solace

Visit the movie database for more information on The Disappearance of Alice Creed.