Olga Kurylenko canât help that sheâs beautiful. But the star of Seven Psychopaths, Magic City, and To the Wonder is much more than eye candy.
This feature appears in Complex's October/November 2012 issue.
Itâs an exceptionally hot early August morning in Los Angeles, and Olga Kurylenko is running late for ballet class after breakfasting on a seasonal veggie omelette at BLD. Luckily sheâs pushing a rented Fiat two-seater, a vehicle thatâs perfect for whipping in and out of Beverly Boulevard traffic without signaling. Olga is all about switching lanes, whether those around her are ready or not.
âSorry, thatâs what I call âFrench driving,ââ says Kurylenko, referring to the vehicular tactics she learned during her years living in Paris, where the narrow roads and laissez-faire approach to traffic stops inspire aggressive maneuvers. From ages 16 through 29, the Ukrainian-born stunner worked in the City of Light as a successful model. Signed to the world-renowned Next agency, she walked runways, graced the covers of magazines like Marie Claire, Vogue, and Elle, and heated up photo shoots for Chanel cosmetics and the lingerie company Lejaby.
Though she danced as a teenager, the 32-year-oldâs skills have gotten rusty. Now sheâs on the verge of dancing full-time again in the upcoming second season of the Starz original series Magic City, so her moves need to be on point.
Magic City depicts the shady, often criminal ways by which Ike Evans (played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan) oversees the Miramar Playa hotel circa 1959. Kurylenko plays Ikeâs trophy wife Vera, a former showgirl who hops back on stage in the next batch of 10 episodes. With only a few weeks left before she starts five months of shooting in Miami, time is of the essence.
Training for the former Bond Girl (see: 2008âs $586 million worldwide grosser Quantum of Solace) is about to intensify, as will her work schedule. Days before she leaves for the M-I-A, Kurylenko will head to the Venice Film Festival to attend the worldwide premiere of To the Wonder, Terrence Malickâs new enigmatic drama. Then, in October, shortly after Magic Cityâs shooting schedule gets underway, Seven Psychopaths opens. This darkly comedic, ultra-violent crime flick features Kurylenko as a mobsterâs main squeeze. Next April, the gorgeous actress will get even more exposure when she stars opposite Tom Cruise in the IMAX-ready science fiction epic Oblivion.
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The pint-size Fiat bobs and weaves through the congestion easily. At a stop light, while idling in the middle lane, Olga realizes that Dance Arts Academy, an inconspicuous studio on La Brea, is off to the right. As the light turns green, she zips across the right-turn-only lane, cutting off an unhappy driver in the process.
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During the 10-minute drive from BLD to Dance Arts, she playfully exclaims âFrench drivingâ five times. âIf someone stops us, Iâll just start speaking in French,â she says, her eyes hidden beneath a pair of dark sunglasses. âThat probably wonât work, but itâs OK.â
In America some people say, âWhy do you want to make money so much?â And I say, âWell, I guess you didnât starve as a kid.â
If anything, she could try manipulating the fuzz in Russian. Olga was born and raised in Berdyansk, a port city in the Ukraine that was financially strapped when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Her mother, Marina Alyabusheva, was an art teacher. She divorced Olgaâs father shortly after Olga was born, opting instead to share child-raising duties with Olgaâs grandma, Raisa. Resources were scarce in their householdâa small, four-room flat often crowded with extended family looking for a place to sleep. While other kids were enjoying sweets and treats, Kurylenko was living on potatoes and cabbage.
Olga still remembers making her first $30 as a 15-year-old model in Moscow. âThat was the first time I ever held dollars in my hand,â she recalls. âIâd never seen dollars before in my life. And then I got $100, and it kept increasing. I would send my mom cash. What made me happy was that, suddenly, I could help my family.â
No wonder Olga isnât afraid to admit that money is a driving force behind her career. âWhen you grow up without it, you want to have it,â she says. âItâs funny, in America some people say, âWhy do you want to make money so much?â And I say, âWell, I guess you didnât starve as a kid.ââ
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In the late â90s, a new passion entered Olgaâs life. With modeling money in her pocket, she began frequenting a local Parisian cinema, seeing up to three movies a day. She fell in love with the work of her favorite director, David Lynch, citing his nightmarish 1997 flick Lost Highway as a formative viewing experience. But it was Breaking the Waves, the devastating 1996 drama from controversial filmmaker Lars von Trier (her âsecond favorite directorâ), that changed her life. âAfter I saw that, I wanted to do what Emily Watson did in the movie,â says Kurylenko of the Academy Awardânominated actressâ performance. âI thought, if acting can lead you into playing a part like that, then I want to be an actress.â
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For several years, Kurylenko balanced modeling gigs with acting classes, yet her runway hustle led casting directors and producers to view her as an object rather than an actress. âI got parts offered to me, but I didnât want to play them because they were too trashy,â she says. âBeing a model, of course, people try to get you into these overly sexual parts.â
Whatâs interesting is to be sexy but not know it.
All it took was one person (a woman) to see beyond Olgaâs beauty. Independent French filmmaker Diane Bertrand cast her in the lead role for her 2005 art-house psychodrama The Ring Finger, an ambiguously disturbing, erotically charged, David Lynchâesque affair. In a brave performance that earned her Best Actress honors at the Brooklyn Film Festival, Olga played a young woman who works for a scientist specializing in preserving peopleâs keepsakes. âItâs still the movie that Iâm the most proud of,â she says.
Feeling good about her prospects, Kurylenko moved to New York for a year to give American movie acting a shot. But in one of her first meetings, she had a rude awakening. âTo go for auditions, you need to be represented by an agent, so, first, I had to get one,â Olga says. âI went to see someone, and I said, âLook, I played the lead role in this French movie,â and he said, âWe donât watch French movies. It doesnât matter. French movies are not important here.ââ
As if that wasnât brutal enough, he stuck the dagger in a little deeper, adding: âYouâre never going to work in America if you donât work on your accent.â
Heading back to Paris to continue working there, Kurylenko set out to prove that agent wrong. By 2007, she scored a big Hollywood role, playing the pierced, tatted-up sexpot Nika Boronina in the gory, action-packed video-game adaptation Hitman. Olga made a lasting impression in one memorable sequence where she walks across a hotel room in a thong.
Somewhere around that time Kurylenko sensed that her career was going in a problematic direction. âWhatâs interesting is to be sexy but not know it,â she says. âYouâll be in a restaurant, and some girls will walk in and you can tell that they really want to be sexy. Itâs written on their faces because thatâs all they want to show. Thereâs a fear that one might not look further. People donât think that youâre interested in showing something else. I understood that there could be a danger in that.â
One year after Hitmanâs release, Kurylenko landed the role that instantly immortalized her name alongside the likes of Halle Berry and Ursula Andress: the part of Camille Montes in the James Bond flick Quantum of Solace. Her scenes with Daniel â007â Craigâwhether defying death in a high-speed boat chase or pistol-whipping a Bolivian military generalâproved that she possesses a rare combination of stunning beauty and ass-kicking physicality. The label âaction actressâ was added to her âsexy actressâ reputation.
She had to make a choice. âEverybody was telling me, âNow youâre going to get stuck in this Bond Girl image,ââ says Olga. âSuddenly my goal was to not stay a Bond Girl my whole life. So I was very careful, and I rejected a couple offers where I didnât want to play another sort of Bond Girl character. I donât know what was a better choice: to take those roles after Bond where Iâd just be the sexy, pretty girl, or to not take the jobs and not appear in the public eye at all? I chose the second option. I think I did the right thing. I could have been more visible right after that movie, and maybe Iâd even be a bigger star at this point, but I didnât want that.â
When the producers of Magic City approached Kurylenko last year about joining the cast, they initially wanted her to audition for the character of Lily Diamond (played by Jessica Marais), a promiscuous, often bare-breasted girl. But Kurylenko was much more interested in Vera, who was originally written as an older, American, more buxom blondeâbut still, a less sexual part. âIt would have been so easy for me to fall into that and go the Lily route,â she says. âI really have to protect myself. At this point, I shouldnât be doing those kinds of overly sexy, frequently naked roles.â
Save for her brief yet memorable appearance in Seven Psychopaths, which finds Kurylenko rocking a bikini while trading lines with a hilariously unhinged Sam Rockwell, her roles will emphasize acting over eye candy. To the Wonder affords her the chance to show off her dramatic chops next to Oscar winners Ben Affleck and Javier Bardem. As for Oblivion, the actress isnât spilling any beans just yet, but the Cruise billing, prime April release date, and presence of TRON: Legacy director Joseph Kosinski promise a sci-fi blockbuster without any T&A.
The variety of Olgaâs upcoming projects is satisfying to a girl who loves to switch lanes. Itâs also gratifying to know that one of her earliest haters has been eating crow for half a decade now. âPeople were telling me that every actress in town was trying to get the Hitman part,â says Olga. âThatâs when that agent said to me, âOK, now I want to represent you.ââ She promptly refused his offer. âIt was the principle,â she says. âAnd I still have an accent, of course. So he was wrong.â
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When Olga Kurylenko asks you to dance with her, youâd better be limber enough to keep up.
At Dance Arts, Olga offers words of encouragement to her passenger, whoâs more Borat than Baryshnikov. She scopes the baggy T-shirt and Jordan basketball shorts and laughs before throwing out a last-chance lifeline. âYou really donât have to do this if you donât want to,â she says. âIâll understand. Ballet isnât as easy as you may think.â
Guessing that her dance partner has all the grace of Frankensteinâs monster on a Quaalude binge, she offers a final word of advice: âTry to follow what I do.â
Rushing down the hallway of the ballet studio, Olga points out a large group of grade-school-age girls in black leotards practicing in an adjacent room. âIf they can do it, you can do it, too,â she adds before stepping into the beginner-level class. âJust try to keep up.â
In early July, photos from the Oblivion set showed Olga and newly divorced Tom Cruise kissingâin character, of course. 'Those shots were clearly from the set,' she says. 'There was a spaceship next to us!'
For her part, Olga wonât have to worry about keeping up with preconceptions anymore. With her multilayered Magic City character, sheâs found the perfect balance between sexiness and drama. The showâs benefits have spilled over into Olgaâs off-screen life too. Sheâs currently dating co-star Danny Huston, whom she met during Magic Cityâs first season. Their relationship was able to withstand a flurry of gossip items in early July, when photos from the Oblivion set showed Olga and newly divorced Tom Cruise kissingâin character, of course. âThose shots were clearly from the set,â she says. âThere was a spaceship next to us!â
Inside Dance Arts, thereâs no flying saucer alongside Olga and her sweaty dance companionâonly a ballerinaâs practice barre. Clad in tight red Abercrombie sweatpants and a black tank top, she's in the zone, cracking a couple smiles but mostly staring into the wall-size mirror and nailing every move with piercing intensity. Impressively limber, she lifts her legs above her waist with ease while her cohort can barely raise his ankles halfway to his knees.
The humiliation is short-lived. After a grueling 45 minutes, Olga looks every bit the professional dancer, casually chatting with the instructor. Her âfriend,â on the other handâgasping, his T-shirt soaked with sweat, and a damp towel draped around his neckâlooks like Rick Ross after a decathlon.
Back in the Fiat, Olga keeps a straight face. âYou did great,â she says with a radiant smile. âThat was brave of you.â Itâs enough to make any guy think heâs ready to sign up for the next Swan Lake auditionâbut not everybody switches lanes so easily.
WATCH OLGA'S BEHIND-THE-SCENES VIDEO:
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Related: Olga's 2010 Hot Complex Interview and Gallery.
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ADDITIONAL CREDITS: (STYLING) Leila Baboi. (HAIR) Campbell McAuley (MAKEUP) Spencer Barnes. FIRST, SECOND, & SEVENTH IMAGES: Top by Lisa Marie Fernandez / Pants by adidas by Stella McCartney / Harness by Chromat. THIRD & FOURTH IMAGES: Top by Lisa Marie Fernandez / Pants by Nike. FIFTH & SIXTH IMAGES: Top and shorts by adidas by Stella McCartney. NINTH IMAGE: Bodysuit by Olima Atelier / Sneakers by Nike / Bracelet by Gilda Grey. TENTH IMAGE: Tops by Lisa Marie Fernandez.