Tamara Drewe star Gemma Arterton has a new role to get her teeth into. She'll portray a vampire in a film by Oscar-winning director Neil Jordan.

The former Bond girl is reported to be teaming up with Atonement star Saoirse Ronan to play blood-sucking siblings in Byzantium.

Producer Stephen Woolley told the Hollywood Reporter: "I love the horror genre and we've been working on this for three or four years.

"I sent it to Neil and he liked the script".

Woolley and Jordan scored a hit with an earlier foray into the world of gothic horror when they made The Company of Wolves - a modern take on the story of Little Red Riding Hood.

Filming starts in October with a script by Moira Buffini who wrote the screenplay for Tamara Drewe.

Gemma is also reported to be set to appear in Crooked House, a murder mystery based on Agatha Christie's 1949 novel of the same name.