Gemma Arterton couldn't stop giggling when she slapped Glenn Close in the face for The Girl with All the Gifts.
The British actress plays Helen Justineau, a teacher for a special set of 'Hungries', zombie-like children who crave flesh but can also think and feel. Glenn stars alongside her in the thriller as Dr. Caroline Caldwell, who believes the kids are the cure for the virus.
They regularly disagree and in one scene, Helen lashes out at Caroline physically. While the scene should have been tense, they couldn't help but break character to have a laugh.
"I really enjoyed that. We kept breaking into fits of giggles," she tells Britain's HELLO! magazine. "I couldn't stop myself. Just the absurdity of standing in the middle of this field, whacking Glenn Close quite hard across the face, and she'd say; 'Was that cathartic for you?' And it really was."
She jokes she's now got a taste of it and is game for slapping more acting icons such as Meryl Streep and Judi Dench.
Throughout the film, Glenn has roughly cut cropped grey hair and Gemma reveals one day the Fatal Attraction actress just decided to chop it off by herself.
"I remember one day just being like, dumbfounded, but also inspired when she cut her own hair in front of me," Gemma recalls. "She said to me: 'I don't think my hair should look like this,' and she just picked up some scissors and lopped (off) this rather large chunk of hair, and that was how it looked for the movie. "
Gemma made a name for herself in blockbusters such as Prince of Persia: The Sands of Times, Clash of the Titans and James Bond movie Quantum of Solace, but she previously revealed she didn't enjoy making those movies. However, she wouldn't rule out doing one again.
"I'm never going to say never because that would be stupid.," she explains. "But I wouldn't race to be in one again."
She is now picking projects that she wants to do and which challenge her, such as 2014 French-language film Gemma Bovery.
