The former Bond girl, actress Gemma Arterton, harbors doubts about the spy franchise's readiness to embrace a female protagonist. "Isn't the notion of a female James Bond akin to casting a man as Mary Poppins?" she inquisitively remarked to The Times. "Discussions about it abound, yet I fancy the public would find it overly scandalous. Sometimes, one must simply defer to tradition."
Arterton portrayed Strawberry Fields in the 2008 Bond adventure, Quantum of Solace, which marked Daniel Craig's second outing as James Bond and the series' 22nd iteration. In the film, Strawberry Fields, a consular officer, is seduced by Bond in Bolivia.
"I hold no regrets about starring in a Bond film, yet I'm baffled by how it has persistently shadowed me," Arterton further elaborated. "My screen time amounted to merely five minutes."
Elsewhere during the interview, the actress described herself as "remarkably unkempt" and expressed surprise that she was long perceived as a "pin-up girl." "It didn't resonate with me, for I genuinely don't envision myself in that mold. I took those roles because they were the ones presented to me," she admitted.
As the years have rolled on, the parts she's been offered have "become increasingly captivating," Arterton revealed. For instance, she starred alongside Ian McKellen in The Critic last year, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2023 and later hit UK theaters in September 2024.
Arterton shared that she had spoken with McKellen after he suffered a dramatic fall onstage during a performance of Henry IV at London's Noël Coward Theatre in June. "It was a significant tumble, and he's an elderly gentleman, after all," she recounted. Although McKellen assured everyone at the time of the incident that he would fully recover, he ultimately withdrew from the remaining performances of the play. "He's taking a much-needed break to recuperate," Arterton continued. "He's such a Peter Pan figure, eternally youthful at heart. This was a bit of a reality check for him."
