Arterton happy as a Bond girl

Gemma Arterton has said she would be happy to be called a Bond girl for the rest of her life.

The 26-year-old actress looked sultry on the red carpet in a daring, black Prada jacket, worn as a dress, at the gala screening of her new film Song For Marion at the London Film Festival in Leicester Square.

Arterton played Bond girl Strawberry Fields opposite Daniel Craig in the last film Quantum Of Solace.

She said: "As long as I'm a girl when I'm 78 as well, I'll be very chuffed about that. I've always seen it as such an honour.

"There's not many people in the world who can say they are, or have been, a Bond girl, so especially this year [the 50th anniversary of the Bond films], you realise what an amazing thing it is, and worldwide. You don't think many countries know about Bond but they do.

"It's huge and it's great to part of something like that."

Arterton plays a choir master in Song For Marion, the new film from London to Brighton's Paul Andrew Williams, about a grumpy old man, played by Terence Stamp who joins his local choir after his wife (Vanessa Redgrave) is stricken with cancer.

Arterton was in her element in the role.

She explained: "I'm a trained singer. That was what I started doing, and then I got into acting by accident. So for me anything to do with music is always going to interest me more than anything else.

"I don't do as much singing as you'd think in this film, I'm conducting a lot. But it's great because it was just music all the time, and all these great songs, and it was just such a fun shoot for those reasons."