Gemma Arterton is explaining the little-known art of ‘pistol-whipping’. ‘Sounds pretty mad, doesn’t it?’ says the 34-year-old star of Quantum of Solace, Clash of the Titans and Tamara Drewe with a peel of laughter. ‘Like a euphemism, or like you’re going to be slapping someone around the face with a pistol.’ And the term has been used in that way more recently, but in Matthew Vaughn’s action-packed prequel to the Kingsman spy sagas – set during the First World War – ‘it’s not that,’ she assures me. ‘It’s more flipping it up and around in the same way you see gunslinging being done in westerns.’Not enough of Gemma’s pistol-whipping made it into the final cut of The King’s Man – which is ‘typical’, says the Kent-born actor.
Read more on telegraph.co.uk