According to a press release we received from New Century Media in the UK,  Georgia Groome plans to host the MADE-BY stand at the Pure Fashion Exhibition in Olympia, London.  The event is scheduled for Sunday, August 2.

MADE-BY works with fashion brands to improve the social and environmental aspects of their entire supply chain using a step-by-step approach. The blue button MADE-BY label is then used on clothing to communicate the brand\u2019s commitment towards continuous improvement.

Georgia Groom, UK star of Angus Thongs and Perfect Snogging, will be hosting the stand with the Harry Potter star, Bonnie Wright.  MADE-BY’s marketing director Allanna McAspurn is very happy to have the young women’s presence at the non-profit organization’s stand:

In order to successfully change peoples perception of sustainable fashion, we need to engage the next generation. Bonnie and Georgia represent two of the brightest young acting talents in the UK and we are very excited about working with them.

Gurinder Chadha lined up the young cast of her new movie Angus, Thongs And Perfect Snogging and sprinkled some Keira Knightley dust over them.

‘I know we’re going to have the Keira effect after the film opens,’ Gurinder said at the film’s recent cast and crew screening.

She was referring to her picture Bend It Like Beckham – the movie that marked Keira as a future star.

Angus, Thongs And Perfect Snogging will certainly launch 16-year-old Georgia Groome, from Nottingham, as a star in the making.

She plays Georgia – the schoolgirl who goes ‘boy-stalking’ with her mates and dreams of winning the heart of the local ‘sex god’.

Gurinder’s film, which she wrote with husband Paul Mayeda Berges, takes on Hollywood’s teenage girl genre movies, like Mean Girls and Clueless, and gives them a perfect English pitch.

It’s well-paced, funny and genuinely touching. I liked Georgia telling her dad ‘This isn’t the Middle Ages – or the Seventies, as you call it,’ or when she describes her dimwitted friend Jas as being ‘half-girl, half-turnip’.

And Georgia brings tremendous honesty and humour to the screen in her role as a 14-year-old from Eastbourne who has never been kissed.

Every schoolgirl, past and present, will, I guess, recognise the DNA of this dilemma as Georgia works through a snogging scale before she stands any chance of landing Robbie, the ‘hottie’ in question (played winningly by Aaron Johnson).

So as not to frighten parents, Paramount Films has gently tweaked the title of Louise Rennison’s brilliant novel from Angus, Thongs And Full-Frontal Snogging to the safer … And Perfect Snogging.

In any case, this isn’t Blackboard Jungle: there are no knives, no one does a Juno and no one smokes skunk.

But the movie’s still hot stuff and the rest of Georgia’s cast mates, who include Eleanor Tomlinson, Sean Bourke and Kimberly Nixon, are all people the camera likes.

The teens have to endure some agonising moments on the path to blissfulness.

‘I think we have it worse because boys care less,’ Georgia insisted when we got on to the topic of school-yard dating.

She’s probably right, although one poor lad in the film, known as Dave The Laugh, does get treated rather badly by Georgia.

Still, the 16-year-old is admirably down-to-earth in her attitude to impending stardom.

Georgia, who was a mean rugby and football player before she turned to acting, told me that she never went into showbusiness for the fame and money.

She was cast in Angus, Thongs And Perfect Snogging after making the acclaimed independent film thriller London To Brighton – all the earning from which went into a trust fund.

‘I’ve not touched any of the money. It’s in a bank and it’s there till I’m 21. That’s what I’ve decided.

‘I don’t need a car, because I’m not old enough to drive. I’ve got a phone, my iPod and a laptop. I’m lucky that I’ve got parents who make sure I have what I need,’ Georgia told me. ‘I’d rather save it till I do need it.’

Georgia, who took 12 GCSEs and next term will study three AS-level subjects, is wary of all the hype and nonsense surrounding showbusiness and said she has been shocked at how the likes of Keira Knightley are treated just because of their weight and looks.

‘I’m quite happy with who I am,’ Georgia told me. ‘I think it must be very difficult for her [Keira] because she’s naturally skinny and it’s, like, just let her be! If she wasn’t eating properly she couldn’t keep going at the rate she does.

‘You are what you are, and I’d rather be myself than try and be what I’m not.’

Angus, Thongs And Perfect Snogging has its world premiere in London on July 16 (Georgia already has her gown!) and it goes on release on July 25.

Source: You magazine, The Mail on Sunday 29th June 2008

 Saw this on This is Derbyshire today

Derbyshire teenager Georgia Groome will be following in the footsteps of Keira Knightley by starring in the latest film from the director of Bend It Like Beckham.

Gurinder Chadha has cast Georgia, from Coxbench, in the lead role of Angus, Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging, adapted from Louise Rennison’s bestselling book series.

Backed by Paramount and Nickelodeon the film was shot in Brighton, Eastbourne and London as well as Ealing Studios last year. It’s a modern coming of age story described as a “British Clueless” which Chadha is hopeful will lead to sequels. If so, it could mean fame for Georgia, the former Derby Youth Theatre member, who made a highly-regarded film debut in cinemas last year in the gritty drama London to Brighton.

Georgia, who is 16 next month, has already had a taste of what to expect.

She said: “It’s really quite scary – the film is not even out for months and yet there have already been stories in the papers because of Gurinder and the books being so well known.

“Lot of fans have started emailing me and Facebooking me. I had to get rid of Bebo because it got to the point where I didn’t have any friends from school on it. People were hacking my photos and it all got a bit scary.

“There are a lot of people sending me emails on Facebook asking questions – I get a couple of these daily already.”

Georgia has put a lot of time and hard work into her acting as well as juggling school work at Trent College, Long Eaton, where she aims to do well in her GCSEs this summer.

“I really enjoyed making the film but it was hard work and there are some people who think I have been on a four-month holiday who don’t understand all the early mornings and then all the catching up on school work at night,” she says.

“I didn’t have any time off I think because I am in every scene. I don’t think anybody realised how much screen time my character has.”

Georgia also knows that she will be carrying the weight of expectations of the many fans of the book’s heroine, also called Georgia.

“There’s a lot on my shoulders because it is the Georgia Nicholson series and a lot of fans have their own idea of what she should be like. I know what I thought Harry Potter should be like before they cast Daniel Radcliffe. I know people on the Internet Movie Data Base have completely opposite ideas and you just have to let it go because no one has even seen me do it yet.”

Georgia hadn’t read Louise Rennison’s tales of teenage angst until she got the part.

“I knew of them but I wouldn’t say I was a super fan,” she says. “But there are 25-year-olds that are still into them. Louise has written a book a year and some people have grown up with them. I read the first one and it was laugh out loud funny.”

After the success of London to Brighton and signing up with London agent Ruth Young, Georgia has landed parts in several new films due for release in 2008 but Angus, Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging is the most high profile.

“At first I didn’t really want to go but my agent said, ‘It’s Gurinder and Paramount and at this stage it’s about meeting people and putting yourself out there’.

“I thought it might be like High School Musical 3 and really Disneyfied but I met Gurinder and she’s lovely and she said the whole point was not to be like that and that was why she was doing it.”

Also on the slate for Georgia is The Cottage, the latest film from Paul Andrew Williams, the director of London to Brighton.

“Paul has told me I can be in everything he does,” says Georgia. “It’s a spoof horror thriller and my sister Eden and me play farmers’ daughters locked up in a cellar. Andy Serkis is playing the lead role. It was only a couple of days shooting but it was a lot of the same crew as London to Brighton.”

Georgia has also filmed a thriller about disappearing children and a short film for Andrea Arnold the director of the acclaimed Red Road.

She’s quick to say that her success is down to the support she has had from her school and the invaluable experience she has had in classes and productions in and around Derby.

She cites her drama teacher mum Fiona Watson, her Derby Youth Theatre director Pete Meakin and Carlton Workshop as among the reasons she has got this far.

She’s particularly upset that the workshop, where director Shane Meadows finds talent, is facing closure due to lack of cash.

“Without that I wouldn’t have got London to Brighton and had the skills I needed. It’s really valuable for craft and people skills and for giving you confidence. The people coming out of it are doing amazing things.”

Georgia is now putting her acting career on the backburner for a while to concentrate on her exams.

“I can’t say if I will still be doing this in 10 years so I have to have something to fall back on,” she says. “And Trent College have worked hard with me and been so supportive.

“It’s only six months until the film comes out and then, hopefully, we will start filming the sequel and I can get back out there but I don’t want to be out of school for another five months right now.”

By exam time, Georgia could be enjoying new-found fame if the film is as big a hit as Bend It Like Beckham. But although Georgia loves the work, fame is not what she seeks.

“I have respect for actors with high profiles but who are not on the Heat cover every week,” she says. And mum Fiona strikes a cautionary note.

“It can be really embarrassing if someone shouts at you and you just want to walk into Top Shop. If you ask me how do I feel about my daughter being the next Keira Knightley I say I don’t want that, I don’t think Keira Knightley wants that for herself.

“No parent seriously wants that for their child. I think you just don’t court that kind of publicity and still do normal things.”

Georgia Groome and Jodie Foster were both 14 years old when they played streetwise sex workers, the latter in Taxi Driver, the former in London to Brighton (2006). Which is nice, because Foster is the ultimate screen idol for the gifted girl from Derby. The actress, who got her big break in a regional theatre production of Annie Get Your Gun, is on the cusp of mesgastardom thanks to a forthcoming starring role in the big-screen adaptation of Angus, Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging. The film, based on the first of Louise Rennison’s eight ultra-popular teen chick-lit books, is loaded with Harry Potterish franchise potential. But Groome isn’t counting her cash just yet: “I can’t drive, so I don’t need a flash car, and I like living at home, so I don’t need a mansion. I’m sensible with money. It’s not why I act.”

Kevin Maher, The Times

“You have to pretend you’re enjoying it, because the kissing has to look real,” the 15-year-old told me as we sheltered from the rain sweeping through Eastbourne.

Girl gang: Georgia Groome (second left) and friends in the film

But she was quick to assure me that the romantic scene she filmed over and over – and over – with actor Aaron Johnson, 17 (who plays Robbie, a sort of teenage sex god), was purely acting.

Director: Gurinder Chadha

Georgia plays, well, actually a character also called Georgia, in Bend It Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha’s big-screen version of Angus, Thongs And Full-Frontal Snogging. The film is based on Louise Rennison’s popular novels about a schoolgirl who lives with her parents on the South Coast and hangs out with her three girlfriends, known as the Ace Gang.

“I was acting, and so was Aaron,” she laughed, although she did confess she has some things in common with the screen Georgia.

“I did once shave my eyebrows like her,” admitted Georgia, who was in the hard-boiled film thriller London To Brighton before Angus.

Mr Johnson’s fellow teen actors on the movie, Sean Bourke and Tommy Bastow, with nothing much to do on a rainy day, jokingly planted the suggestion that the snogging between Georgia and Aaron might have been more than acting.

By the time I’d asked around a bit, I realised the lads were winding me up.

In any case, Sean, who plays Robbie’s brother Tom, admitted that it’s not quite the nirvana he thought it might be having all these teenage girls on set.

“I have to remember that I’m 18 and they’re 15 and when I do my snogging scenes (with Eleanor Tomlinson, who plays Georgia’s friend Jas) her mum’s always on set watching – and so is Gurinder – so it’s hands-behind-my-back time,” said Sean who, in any case, has a girlfriend of two years.

Gurinder guffaws when we chat about her youthful wannabe Lotharios. She jokes that one of the boys was absolutely shaking during his romantic scene.

“I said to him: ‘Just kiss her on the lips! Don’t go for the ear, go for the lips!’”

Initially, Gurinder and husband Paul Berga were just going to write the screenplay of Rennison’s book and move on.

For one thing, Gurinder was pregnant with twins (who were born in June), but she and Paul were so happy with the script that they decided they wanted to continue working on the film.

“I was able to go back to my schooldays and write about what it was like to be a teenager, but I was adamant that because everything about Louse Rennison’s books is so English, it would remain so.

“If we do anything that looks American, I won’t shoot it,” Gurinder said defiantly.

The rain in Eastbourne was certainly un-American.

By BAZ BAMIGBOYE, Daily Mail

This year’s big Brit flick has more than just one Nottingham connection. It is produced in the city and stars a local teenager. London To Brighton, a thriller set in the seedy underworld of London, is a low budget film.Producer Al Clark, who is based at the Broadway Media Centre, says London to Brighton follows the gritty tradition of British crime thrillers.

“It’s a story of a 25 year old prostitute on the run with a 12 year old girl in tow. They’re running from her pimp and gang members. You don’t know why they’re running but the story unfolds in flashbacks. It’s an art house thriller.”

Georgia’s big screen debut

Georgia Groome, a pupil at Trent College, is a 14 year old playing a 12 year old in an 18 certificate film.

“We had to check that the script was all fine with it being quite a strong subject and I decided that I was grown up enough to audition.”

Alastair and Georgia

She is as member of the ITV Junior Workshop in Nottingham. After a succession of interviews she got the all important phone call offering her the part.

Georgia’s role is a tough one. She has to do a lot of screaming, she’s involved in demanding fight scenes and had to endure long days and nights on set but she finished her role back in February.

Al’s production path

Al produced the film along with his colleague Rachel Robey. They’re part of a Nottingham-based production team, Wellington Films Ltd.

“We made a short film with the same director Paul Andrew Williams in 2001 called Royalty which did very well at festivals. He approached us in May last year saying he’d written a feature length script based on the same characters and would we like to do it with him.

Georgia as Joanne in London

“We jumped at the chance obviously.”

Al thinks Nottingham is a good place to be at the moment.

“This is a good city for filmmaking. It’s got a very lively filmmaking community. Traditions of Shane Meadows and Chris Cooke and soon Simon Ellis… [There's ] a lot of team spirit here but also funding from EM Media in this region.”

The release

London to Brighton is going on nationwide release from Friday, 1st December 2006.

Georgia as Joanne in Brighton

However, it’s already won several awards at this year’s film festivals and received rave reviews from several national newspapers.

Writer / director Paul Andrew Williams received the Skillset New Directors Award at the Edinburgh festival. London to Brighton has won the Grand Jury Award at the Dinard British Film Festival and also won of Best UK Feature at Raindance 2006. It’s scored five stars in the Guardian and The Times called London to Brighton “a supremely confident piece of storytelling”

From The BBC ]]> http://www.georgiagroome.com/2006/11/13/georgia-groome-in-london-to-brighton/feed/ 3