For those who believe the model-slash-actress category remains an underestimation in Hollywood, Olga Kurylenko hopes to shred your assumptions by this weekend. Following a chance encounter that launched her international modeling career at age 14, shes taking a turn beside the leading men of her generation some 20 years later.
On screen, the Ukrainian-born actress effortlessly morphs from mega-babe seductress to mousy, tortured bride. 007 fans will remember her as the former in Quantum of Solace, where she plays Daniel Craigs Bond girl. Last year, she appeared in Martin McDonaghs Seven Psychopaths, and currently, shes a fixture on Starzs Miami mob drama, Magic City.
It doesnt matter whether one can or cannot act just the fact that one is a model is enough for people to make an opinion, Kurlenko told Rolling Stone. Opinion on someone being a model is opinion without base, because model is just a word it doesnt mean anything.
For her latest project, Kurlenko dove into Terrence Malicks To the Wonder, a scriptless meditation on love. She also took on Joseph Kosinskis post-apocalyptic parable Oblivion, which co-stars Tom Cruise. (Later this May, shell appear alongside Aaron Eckart in Erased, portraying a tough CIA agent not unlike Jessica Chastain, Malicks last starlet.)
Peter Travers Reviews Oblivion
Describing the free-form Malickian production, Kurylenko said the director keeps his actors moving constantly.
You wake up and you just go on set. He doesnt tell you what to do, he just says, heres 15 pages of writing, thats todays subject, and we start filming.
To prepare, Malick directed the actress to the bricks of Russian literature Anna Karenina, The Brothers Karamazov, and The Idiot.
I didnt even need the script after that. Those were my script. I built the character as a combination of the different female characters in those books.
And while the actress, who has been financially independent since her teens, didnt completely relate to the cannon of tortured heroines, as a woman, she knows the type.
In [To the Wonder], Marina has a predisposition to melancholy, Kurylenko says. Shes a very unstable woman. Shes suffering. So when she meets a man, she sees him as the ending of all her suffering. But its just an illusion.
Oblivion: Fantasy Without an Original Thought, says Peter Travers
By contrast, her Oblivion character, Julia, emanates fortitude as a deus ex machina, forcing Cruises character, Jack, to get with the program.
Julia is a much stronger person, Kurylenko says. I watched video of old astronauts what training they went through. It made me understand that, physically, she must be really strong. I also re-watched Solaris, because I though the subject worked very similar to ours.
Despite the big roles, slinky gowns, and de rigueur arm candy, whatever you do, dont call the former Victorias Secret model a dream girl.
I feel more myself when I dont play one, Kurylenko says. In my life, I am not a dream girl. I am an absolutely simple person. Im a grey mouse.