Movies And TV

Actress Gemma Chan dons heavy metal for Transformers movie

She takes centre stage in one of the summer’s biggest blockbusters, Transformers: The Last Knight, but just who is gorgeous Gemma Chan? By Naomi McElroy.

Little is known about her character Quintessa, a mysterious robot Optimum Prime refers to as his ‘maker’ in the movie, but fans believe she will play the franchise’s ultimate villain.

Luckily we know a lot more about the real life Gemma Chan (34) — she’s a former model, a football fanatic, she’s dating comedian Jack Whitehall and she collects houseplants.

Here’s everything you needed to know about the summer’s biggest new star.

Gemma in Transformers

Gemma’s maternal grandparents, a nurse and a teacher, escaped Communist China with their two children just before the Cultural Revolution.

They eventually settled in Greenock, Scotland, becoming the first Chinese family to live there.

Gemma’s mum is a pharmacist, her father is an engineer, and she grew up in Kent with her little sister where she played violin, swam at a national level and learned ballet.

A shy child, Gemma always wanted to act, but her parents persuaded her to study law instead at a prestigious Oxford college.

“I wouldn’t want to call them pushy, but they are quite traditional, and very practical people.

“There was a lot of fear for them, hearing their daughter say she wanted to become an actress, so they were keener to see me get a degree in something academic.”

She worked as a model, landing campaigns for Nivea skincare and appearing in Elle and Cosmopolitan magazines, and even made it to the final of reality TV show Project Catwalk, but only ever saw the catwalk as a short term way to fund drama school.

Her father stopped speaking to her for three months when she turned her back on law for a career in acting, and it took her mother three years to congratulate her on winning a role in Doctor Who.

“I watched it with them and they went really quiet. I think they were finding it bizarre to watch their daughter appear on screen playing a character, so I didn’t know how they felt about it for a while.

“About three years later I got a text from my mum saying that she’d been doing the ironing with the TV on and that my Doctor Who was being repeated.

“She said, ‘I don’t know if I ever told you at the time but I want you to know that we really enjoyed it, and we thought you were brilliant.’

“It was so lovely to get that from her, even after all that time.”

She’s since appeared in Doctor Who, Dates, had a small role in Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them and played Billie Piper’s dominatrix rival in Secret Diary of a Call Girl.

She just missed out on becoming a Bond Girl in 2012, losing out to Berenice Marlohe, buts she’s not losing any sleep over it.

“I would have done it happily, but to be a Bond girl isn’t everything I aim for as an actress.”

Gemma in Secret Diary of a Call Girl

She’s best known for her role as a robot in Channel 4 drama Humans, and Gemma reveals she and her fellow cast mates were sent to ‘synth school’ to learn how to act like androids.

“The director didn’t want anything robotic in a clichéd or a jerky way.

“I was given a lot of homework, I had to practise ironing as a synth, practise washing up as a synth, cooking a meal as a synth.

“It’s definitely the most prep I’ve had to do for a role.”

It worked though — the show became Channel 4’s biggest hit in 20 years.

She’s obsessed with AI.

After playing Anita in Humans Gemma became so interested in artificial intelligence that she joined forces with some of the world’s top scientists to build a life-size robot version of herself for the documentary How To Build A Human.

“I was completely fascinated and only a bit creeped out.”

She’s been dating actor and comedian Jack Whitehall since they met on the set of Channel 4 student drama Fresh Meat.

But although the couple live together in Notting Hill, where they famously sleep under an Arsenal duvet (both are huge fans and Gemma says she visits the Emirates Stadium around 10 times a year where she is, “pretty foul-mouthed, usually at our own players”) don’t expect her to talk about her boyfriend in interviews anytime soon.

“It’s not an explicit, mutual thing we have, but it’s become the headline before, when I’ve talked about it, so I just don’t. And really, there’s just nothing to report.”

Gemma with boyfriend Jack Whitehall