Olga Kurylenko “Quantum Of Solace”

Olga plays the Bond Girl, Camille Montes, in the 22nd James Bond film, Quantum of Solace and portrays Nika Boronina in the movie adaptation of the video game Hitman. Kurylenko was discovered by a female model scout while on vacation in Moscow at the age of 13. When she was 17, she signed a contract with the Paris-based Madison modeling agency. By the age of 18, she had already appeared on the covers of Vogueand Elle.

While working as a model in Paris, Kurylenko supported her mother back home in Ukraine.

She grew up poor; she shared an apartment with her aunt and uncle, grandparents, and cousin. She never had any fancy clothes, often wearing hand-me-downs and re-sewing torn sweaters instead of buying new ones.

The fact that she is the first Bond girl from a post-Soviet state received mixed reactions in post-Soviet countries. The Saint Petersburg based Communist group KPLO has accused her of “moral and intellectual betrayal” in starring in a film about the “enemy of the Soviet people” (meaning James Bond), but the mayor of Berdyansk has suggested naming a street after her and Kurylenko and her mother met Ukraine’s First Lady Kateryna Yushchenko in President Yushchenko’s family country house.