From Ukraine, with love

Olga Kurylenko shakes it up in 'Quantum of Solace' as the first Bond girl who doesn't fall for 007

(Eric Grigorian for The Boston Globe) Ukrainian actress Olga Kurylenko plays Camille in the new Bond film "Quantum of Solace."

LOS ANGELES - Let's be clear. Olga Kurylenko is anything but disappointed that she doesn't bed Bond, James Bond, in the franchise's latest installment (in which, atypically, he doesn't actually introduce himself that way).

Bond not bedding his leading lady in "Quantum of Solace," which opens Friday in Boston, is a first. And it's now a fact of Kurylenko's life that everyone is going to ask her whether she was upset to break ranks with the other Bond girls, as they'll forever be known. For the record, she considers the question condescending, not to mention insulting. Earlier this morning, the former top model apparently blew up at a roomful of reporters who dared to ask it.

"I just became all emotional when they started talking about, 'Are you defensive about this? Are you happy you didn't sleep with Bond?' " says Kurylenko, a native Ukrainian who speaks Russian, French, English, and a smattering of Hebrew since making a movie in Israel. "I was like, 'Come on guys, I think it's cool.' But they wouldn't believe me. I was like, 'What's your problem? You think I'm acting because I want to show my [behind]. If I wanted that I would have stayed a model.' "

Later, all 5 feet 9 inches of her (much of it leg, even without the impossibly high open-toed black booties) stretched out in a hotel room, she adds, "I am really glad. Because she's the one" who will stand out for what she doesn't do with 007, in this 22d installment on the decades-old action series.

For someone almost achingly beautiful - thick dark hair, huge hazel eyes, perfectly pale skin that she tanned in the real Panamanian sun to play the part of a South American girl/woman out to avenge her family's murder in this follow-up to "Casino Royale" - Kurylenko sounds fairly disinterested in the looks that took her from a small town in Ukraine to Moscow to Paris, where she now lives.

Back in her homeland, in fact, news of her stunning Western success hasn't been all flattery - although it may well be satire. A hard-line communist group has accused Kurylenko of betraying her heritage and declared she deserves the fate of World War II traitors who slept with "enemies of the people," according to reports of postings on the group's website. The group said its outcry is a protest against Ukraine joining NATO, and not a desire to pull one over on the West.

Kurylenko, who turns 29 Friday, says she just wants to be taken seriously as an actress, despite some previously steamy roles that featured explicit nudity. After debuting in Diane Bertrand's "L'Annulaire" and a small part in "Max Payne" with Mark Wahlberg, among other movies, she appears to want the career options that can come with being a Bond girl without the baggage of being one. She mentions former BG Halle Berry, who's won an Academy Award for best actress, as one of her role models. And she's happy to ugly up if asked.

"First of all, I didn't ask to be born like this; it's not my fault . . .," Kurylenko says. "And I'm not going to be like this forever. I'm just young for now. I'm going to get older. I don't mind. I don't want to be perfect. I'm not perfect. I'm a human . . .

"The good thing is: Most people don't believe it, but I can be ugly," she adds. "I can be really ugly."

It is hard to believe, and it's of course not why she was cast as Camille opposite Daniel Craig, whose first spin as James Bond was the highest-ever grossing installment in the series. "Solace" director Marc Forster gave his allegiance to Berry, who starred in his "Monster's Ball," and former BG Ursula Andress, who shares his Swiss heritage. But he also said, in a roundtable discussion, that Kurylenko had the most depth of the actresses he saw for the part of Camille - and he saw hundreds of audition tapes.

For their part, the producers say they considered literally thousands of women around the world. "Her character has to have a lot of history," says producer Barbara Broccoli. Kurylenko "moved us in the screen test [with Craig] and that was that."

Craig's and Kurylenko's onscreen interaction involved tons of stunts by both of them, and not so much as a kiss. Of the heartbroken hero he plays, his great love having died in the previous film, Craig says, "Bond isn't on a mission of vengeance. He wants to find peace in himself. [Camille] is on a mission of vengeance. He can step back and help her out."

In real life, though, the twice married and divorced Kurylenko says she can take care of herself. Raised by her art teacher mother (often mistaken for her sister, she says) after her parents divorced, Kurylenko has a story that is almost unbelievable: Approached by an agent in the Moscow subway as a teenager, she was persuaded to move to the big city, where she was rediscovered by a scout for French modeling agencies. Covers of Vogue and Elle ensued, among many other magazines and ad campaigns.

But for Kurylenko, the travel, the money, the recognition, became a means to an end: acting, which says she knew she wanted to do even as a girl so poor her extended family had to share a small apartment. Back then she studied English and art, piano and ballet.

"I'm from a small town," she says. "We had nothing, no money. You want to have your dreams but you don't really believe."

But Kurylenko got her first break, then her second, and now she's a Bond girl - a role that, perfectly, she got the word she'd won on Christmas Eve. ("My friends couldn't believe it because I didn't tell anyone I was up for the part . . .," she says. "I hang up and I was like screaming and they were like, 'What happened?' . . . I think they were a little like smashed on the head. They couldn't believe what was going on.")

Kurylenko, however, wasn't willing to get by on her looks. Her Camille speaks English with a Spanish accent that can't quite be placed, having had to layer it over her Russian accent with hints of the French that she taught herself to speak in six months. To help, friends from Spain and Argentina recorded themselves reading poems in English. She also had a voice coach.

"That accent I worked on," Kurylenko says with a huge sigh. "That required work. . . . What's good is that I'm pretty good with languages, I can pick up a language really, really fast. I have a good ear, maybe because I did music."

But sounding South American wasn't good enough. Kurylenko wanted to look the part, too. Hence the tan, normally verboten for a woman who for more than a decade made her living from her face and whose face remains one of her major assets. She says she worked hard on that, too.

"You wouldn't think so, but I get black," she says. "I thought, 'Come on, once in my life.' And you know what? I think it looks sexy. It was perfect for the character. That tan really added another believable thing. It changed me. I look totally different in the film . . . I didn't want them to say, 'Who is this Russian girl?' Now no one is thinking that."