The former Ukrainian top who has become French is the star of the new France 2 series.
“I have long been a fantasy, without having done anything for it. I never seduced to seduce, but if I like a man, I let him know. In “Romance”, her series on France 2, alongside Pierre Deladonchamps, she is Alice, a beautiful indifferent, cold and mysterious: everything she is not. In life, Olga Kurylenko is natural, spontaneous, generous. She preserves in her something animal and irrational, and continues to see love as a miracle. Even after two marriages – four years for one, one year for the other. “Two months before the ceremony, I had warned my second husband that I had no desire to marry him. He told me that if I refused, he would leave me. I loved him, I stayed. But he was jealous like a tiger. A jealous man should never marry an actress! Today, when it’s not going any more, I pack my bag and I break! She does not view her divorces as failures but rather as experiences.
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I paid a lot for men in the past, it’s one of the big mistakes of my life
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In love with love, she had, she says, only one love at first sight, for an actor with whom she lived three years and from whom she is now separated. He is a beautiful Italian who now shares his life, a story still too recent for her to say more. If tomorrow a man asked her to choose between him and his career, what would she do? “If he assumes me financially, why not? I have paid a lot for men in the past, it is one of the big mistakes of my life. But I love my job. I would like to make one film a year, just for fun, instead of exhausting myself from going around the world. “
She never forgot where she came from: Berdiansk, a city with no future in a remote corner of Ukraine. But it was in the Moscow metro that she was spotted, at 14, by a modeling agency. “A meeting that turned my life upside down,” she recalls. Otherwise, she would have become a doctor, like her grandmother, or a teacher, like her mother. While her friends were celebrating, a disciplined teenager, she studied or worked. “I don’t regret anything from that time. If one day I find myself on the street, I know I will always get by. I sometimes tell myself that, finally, I was lucky to have this life… I come from a very modest background. I experienced hunger and cold. This is what built me and allowed me to become what I am: a survivor! With unwavering determination, she fought to escape a small, cramped existence: “Going back was never an option.” “She did not forget the way some men looked at her, when she said she was Ukrainian …” In their heads, all Slavic women are greedy. Power and money never interested me. It is only the heart that counts. The rest, I don’t care! “
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The success of the Bond opened all doors for me
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Arrived in Paris, Olga learned French in six months, then obtained her naturalization in 2001. She also quipped in Hebrew, Turkish and Mandarin. Enough to trace its route: model, then actress. Thanks to “Quantum of Solace”, where she plays a South American who makes James Bond (Daniel Craig) see all the colors, she became a planetary star overnight. “The success of the Bond opened all doors for me,” she marvels. She goes from film to film, and dreams of shooting one day with Jacques Audiard or Almodovar. In love with Ben Affleck in “A la Marvel”, by cult director Terrence Malick, she also gave the response to Tom Cruise in “Oblivion”. An eclectic journey between two continents, for an actress who is now unavoidable.
From her homeland, this traveler has kept the Slavic, melancholy and sentimental soul. She laughs and cries for nothing. She is also a dreamer who would have loved, as in “Romance”, to live in the 1960s. “It was a magnificent era. People were free to love and lived without constraints. No one was there to judge you. I can’t help but think it was better before. Everything scampers off ! It is not that she does not like our time … She hates it! Just as she hates people who live withdrawn. So she forces herself to remain optimistic. “We have no other choice,” she said. When you hit bottom, you can only go back up. My son Alexander is 4 years old. I am worried about her future. I don’t want to see him grow up in this environment. She speaks of him as she would speak of her great love. “I support our separations less and less. I decided to become more selective in my choices, so as not to stray too far from him. She, who has spent her life running like a headless chicken, loved, she said, confinement. “Spending all this time together … it was an unexpected chance. I also needed to take a break. To my surprise, I discovered and appreciated the slowness. “
Also read.Ex-James Bond Girl Olga Kurylenko suffers from coronavirus
Not easy to work and, moreover, to be a mother. She would like to be like those women she admires, capable of doing a thousand things at once. But she positive, as always: “Whatever happens, I think it could be worse! This philosopher warrior never complains. “The key to being happy is to appreciate what you have. We can always want more, but we can also lose everything. Life can take back all that it has given you. She lives between London, Paris, her favorite city in the world, and Provence where she owns a house. “More than Brexit, it is racism that touches me. I don’t understand how you can judge someone on their skin color. Not too political, she shows her distance. The demonstrations in Paris? Yes, of course, but it scares him a little, especially the crowd which can suddenly become violent. “The French are very spoiled, they don’t realize how lucky they are. They should come to Ukraine for a tour! ”
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