Gemma: Producers filmed me in gym to check I was losing weight
HER hour-glass figure may be the envy of many, but Gemma Arterton has revealed it hasn’t always been good enough for Hollywood producers.
The 31-year-old British actress says bosses once flew a personal trainer to a movie set in Morocco to ensure she lost weight – and had her filmed in the gym at pm to prove she was exercising.
She said an ‘obese’ producer told her she couldn’t snack on dried apricots, and added that she had been ordered to lose weight ‘on a few films’.
The size 10 actress said: ‘We were out in Morocco. A couple of weeks went past and they were like, “We need a personal trainer”.
‘And they flew someone out overnight that gave up their whole life to be with me and be my personal trainer. You know when it’s like, “Is it that bad that I need an emergency...” [It was as if they were] on speed dial – “Get that trainer out here now!” It was so traumatic at the time.’
Miss Arterton, 31, said the producers of the film – which she didn’t name – were so desperate for her to shift the pounds they asked her coach to film her in the gym.
Speaking on The Guilty Feminist podcast, she said: ‘They’d measure me and they’d call up the trainer at like nine at night going, “Is she in the gym? And if she isn’t, why isn’t she in the gym?”
‘And then they’d get me in the gym and film me in the gym and they’d have to know that I was there.’ She added: ‘One day I went to get some snacks on set, some dried apricots. And this big, fat, obese producer went, “I hope you’re not going to eat that”.’
Miss Arterton has previously spoken about how the producers of £150million blockbuster Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time had asked told her to lose weight.
‘They really tried to transform me,’ she said. ‘They sent me to a personal trainer, wanted to get my teeth done, hair extensions, make me look like somebody else.’
She told GQ magazine in 2010: ‘Unless you’re really famous and successful, then they’re going to bully you into going to the gym. It’s a side of the industry that I find uncomfortable.’