Gemma Arterton speaks out on 'Quantum of Solace' role: 'As I got older I realized there was so much wrong with Bond women'
Actress Gemma Arterton found international fame as ill-fated agent Strawberry Fields opposite Daniel Craig’s James Bond in the 2008 film Quantum of Solace. But in a new interview with the Sun, the British star says she’s gotten flak for being a Bond girl — a role she admits she has her own reservations about.
“At the beginning of my career, I was poor as a church mouse and I was happy just to be able to work and earn a living,” Arterton, who has also starred in Their Finest and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, told the British newspaper.
“I still get criticism for accepting Quantum Of Solace, but I was 21, I had a student loan, and you, know, it was a Bond film,” the actress, now 34, added.
“But as I got older I realized there was so much wrong with Bond women. Strawberry should have just said no, really, and worn flat shoes.”
The film — Craig’s second outing as 007 — sees him seducing the beautiful MI6 agent Strawberry Fields shortly after meeting her in Bolivia. The tryst is short-lived, as he returns to his hotel room to find her naked body sprawled across the bed and covered in black oil.
Arterton created an alternate ending for her character in a short story, titled Woke Bond Woman, for the 2018 collection Feminists Don’t Wear Pink and Other Lies. In it, Strawberry rebuffs Bond’s advances — writing him off as a work colleague 20 years her senior — and lives to see another day, even taking out some baddies of her own.
“I decided to write a piece about what would happen post-#MeToo, post Harvey Weinstein, if my Bond girl was a woke woman,” she explained during an appearance on the Feminists Don’t Wear Pink podcast.
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