Given that she was only 26 when Byzantium was made, you'd be forgiven for thinking Gemma Arterton was just a little too young to be playing the mother of Sairose Ronan. Of course, director Neil Jordan's 2012 horror is a vampire movie, meaning both Arterton and Ronan are playing characters with life experience way beyond their apparent years - which both actresses prove very well equipped to do. Taking up residence in a beach front guest house, Arterton's Clara is obsessive in her protection of her daughter Eleanor, and not without reason: a misogynistic brotherhood of elder vampires has been on their trail for years, wanting both of them dead. Still, it's not hard to see how Eleanor could get exhausted with it all; how's she ever meant to get with a boy when her mother keeps killing any men that get too close to them...?
