Arterton was born Gemma Christina Arterton in Gravesend, Kent, the elder daughter of Sally-Anne (née Heap), a cleaner, and Barry Arterton, a welder. Arterton was born with polydactyly, and was brought up, along with her sister, Hannah Jane, by their single mother, on a council estate in Gravesend. Arterton's parents divorced when she was five, and her father remarried in 1996. She attended Painters Ash Primary School in Northfleet, then attended Gravesend Grammar School for Girls on Pelham Road in Gravesend, she took a performance arts course at the Miskin Theatre in Dartford (part of North West Kent College) and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art on a full grant.
