“Hollywood always represents this big dream and fairy tale in people’s minds, but to me, it’s just hard work. Of course, we play fairy tale on the red carpet. It’s all Cinderella. But when the clock strikes midnight, I turn into a gray mouse and I go home, and I take my dress off and it’s over. That’s Hollywood.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“A Bond girl must be a strong and independent woman, but at the same time charming and sensual. Those opposite qualities combined together make her interesting. She must be strong but at the same time feminine.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“My life is not that glamorous. I actually live a pretty simple life, really. I just work. I don’t have time to do all these glamorous things. I just do my thing, just work.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I love badminton. That’s my sport!”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I believe in miracles. At the age of 13, I was on holiday in Moscow with my mother. It was the only trip I took in my whole childhood. We stepped off a metro train and were approached by a talent scout who told me that she wanted to sign me to her modeling agency.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“In Paris, everybody is in black! But you know, in Ukraine everyone wears bright colours.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I did a shoot with massive iguanas in Costa Rica when I was modeling back then. They were like little dinosaurs, and they sat right across my arms and by my face. The guy told me not to make any sudden movements because they had enormous claws. The guy said he would rip my skin if he attacked.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“Music evokes so many feelings in us, memories, nostalgia, things that are connected to our past.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I love boats. I can be on a boat for days.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I think I’ll be single my whole life. It’s entirely possible I’m going to end up alone. Because I don’t want to make any sacrifices for my own development and achieving what I want to achieve, and I don’t want a family to get in the way of that.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I don’t see divorce as a failure. I see it as the end to a story. In a story, everything has an end and a beginning.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“To be a Bond girl you need courage, charm, determination and feistiness.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“Modeling isn’t really a tough job. Acting is much harder: so much prep and changing your look and mannerisms. It’s a more difficult lifestyle being a model. I traveled all the time. Although, now I wonder, because I travel all the time for acting, too. So they both have their difficulties.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“My mom Marina and I were poor and hungry. We could sometimes not afford to eat – seriously. We lived together in a small town, called Berdyansk, in Ukraine. I was an only child. I don’t think we would have survived if there had been more kids.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I just love France, I love French people, I love the French language, I love French food. I love their mentality. I just feel like it’s me. I’m very French.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“If a man can make me laugh and stimulate me intellectually, then I wouldn’t mind if he was 4 ft. 8 in. with a huge belly. The only thing that would put me off is bad breath – but even that can be fixed. A bad personality isn’t so easy to fix.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I was on the beach every summer. That was the pleasant part of my childhood because we were right by the sea. We’d take a picnic, and I’d spend hours in the water until I turned blue. You couldn’t get me out of there.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I’ll never forget the modelling shoot I did in the Bahamas on a pink sand beach at Harbour Island. It felt like I’d just landed in paradise; it was so beautiful.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“Being single is only sad if you have a problem with your own company. I’m content with mine.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“What I love about sci-fi is that every generation’s films are based on what we know at that point in time. We make movies about the future, but it’s always based on what we have. Then, as science grows and we discover new things, so do our ideas.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I’ve loved men that wear un-ironed clothes, it doesn’t make me fall out of love. When you love someone, you should see beyond their image. It just makes me want to iron their shirt. But once you love a person, they could wear a garbage bag!”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I love it when a man cooks; it’s one of those points that makes me adore a guy. I think it’s so romantic and I feel cared for when a man cooks.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I’ve seen guys sit the whole day doing nothing, and I hate it when people are unproductive. I don’t like a guy who sits on the couch all day.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I grew up in the Ukraine and then I went to Paris in 1996. I went there because there was a modeling agency that invited me there to work so I thought, ‘Sure.’”
― Olga Kurylenko
“When you live in a small town in the Ukraine, you definitely want to go to Paris.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I looked for acting classes in Paris just to do something different than modeling. And then one day I just thought, ‘Okay, that’s enough, I have to start doing something.’ I went to the acting agency and I just told them I wanted to act and asked them if they would give me a chance, and they did.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I like men who paint or write or do something creative.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I don’t like the mentality that comes with rich Russian men. Because they have money, they think they can buy a woman – and they do.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“Every actor has to move in a Terrence Malick film – that’s the requirement. If you stop, he’ll tell you, ‘No, no, keep moving.’ You can’t be static. It’s a choreography.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“On a Terrence Malick set, your thoughts are his voice. You think you’re thinking, but actually he’s thinking for you. He speaks to you, and he’s the voice in your mind.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I just went to an acting agency one day and just said, ‘I would like to act. Would you take me?’ And they took me.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I always listen to all kinds of different music from different years. I listen to the contemporary, but once in a while into eighties, you know just for fun, and sometimes classical too. So I have this big mix on my i-pod… Amy Winehouse, Gwen Stefani, OutKast, Jay-Z. I listen to trance, pop, everything. It really depends on my mood.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“Why marry? If you’re not married, you just leave each other and it’s cool. Who needs the paper? To me it means nothing.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“When I earnt my first money, I went to a shop and bought jeans and a top. But then I wore them both for such a long time that finally my model agency said, ‘You should buy something else!’ I was saving the money because it was the first time I’d ever had any.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I bring spiritual books with me while travelling. I like books about thoughts and how you see the world.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“Every one of us, no matter how damaged or abnormal or shut down, we’re all looking for love. Every person needs love in this world, but our views on what love is vary enormously.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“We were born and we die. In between, I think we try to live as best we can.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“All I want to do is a rom-com, but you know, people see me as an action person because the first movie that was seen by a lot of the public would be ‘Hitman.’”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I’ve always had a way with a gun. As a kid, I loved to fire them at the shooting range in amusement parks. I’d always return home with a handful of prizes.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I love fire. As a child I loved setting light to things. I’d always be in the forest putting matches to pieces of wood. I’ve always regarded fire as my friend.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“Having people I love around me – friends and family – is great, but I don’t necessarily need a relationship.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I did not have a father. It was my mom who chose to be alone. She felt that she would be better off by herself with me after I was born.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I hate jealousy, I hate possessiveness. I’m nobody’s possession.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I maybe missed money in my childhood, but I didn’t miss love, that’s for sure. My dad wasn’t there, but I can tell you not even once did I think I was missing something.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I’m a bit of a romantic. In theory!”
― Olga Kurylenko
“With modelling, you go somewhere for 24 hours and you don’t even see the city, you don’t talk to people or see the culture.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“If I hadn’t been a model, I couldn’t have become a movie actress.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“With modelling, you provide an image that is fake; with acting you have to provide an image that’s real.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I’d love to work with David Lynch. I’m such a big fan. He’s a genius.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“A lot of movies are made to make us dream.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“When I was a kid, we never had a videogame in my house. But my cousin did, and each time I went to her house I was able to play ‘Tetris’ and ‘Mario.’ Those were the only two games I played as a child.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“When you’re never home and traveling, you don’t play videogames.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I know how addictive videogames are – I have friends who can’t get up off the couch because they’re so hooked. They provide these different virtual worlds that you can live in.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“As an actor, you don’t want to play a one-dimensional character.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“Eventually there are going to be chips in brains. Imagine if you could just buy knowledge and download it into your head instead of having to learn it. Like in ‘The Matrix.’ Imagine all the years saved!”
― Olga Kurylenko
“What I love about sci-fi is that every generation’s films are based on what we know at that point in time. We make movies about the future but it’s always based on what we have. Then as science grows and we discover new things, so do our ideas. You know?”
― Olga Kurylenko
“You don’t dream about things that are impossible; that are out of your range.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“You know it’s harder to be a girl in this world because we’re the weaker sex.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“To tell you the truth, I don’t really follow what men wear. Men’s fashion is much simpler than women’s. It doesn’t change as much.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“When you love someone, you should see beyond their image.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I wasn’t, like, this top model; I was quietly doing my work, and when I became an actress, people started doing research, and everybody found out. People dug out photos, and suddenly people became interested – but no one was interested in my photos when I was a model.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I was never a model-y model. I was doing it as a job, but people didn’t even know I was a model.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I believe that when things are easy, people stay dormant.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“Balconies scare me, and I would never do a shoot on one. I am afraid of heights.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“We shot ‘Oblivion’ in Iceland; that was amazing. It’s so, so beautiful. They didn’t have any Waldorf Hotels there, though; we stayed in the middle of nowhere!”
― Olga Kurylenko
“America’s fine, nice, nice hiking near L.A. But I am European. I love London and Paris. Friends and intellect, big thought, why not?”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I would never go travelling on my own. Some people like to go backpacking alone, but there’s no way I would do that, even if you paid me – I just don’t see the point. If I discover something beautiful, for me it’s very important to be able to share it with someone and not just see it for myself.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I love Parisian hotels. I usually stay in either Le Bristol, which is gorgeous, or Hotel Paris Rivoli, which is very French and feels like a step back in time. I also love the luxury of Waldorf Astoria hotels.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I always try to learn a few words from a new language wherever I go.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“When you grow up without it, you want to have it. It’s funny, in America some people say, ‘Why do you want to make money so much?’ And I say, ‘Well, I guess you didn’t starve as a kid.’”
― Olga Kurylenko
“What’s interesting is to be sexy but not know it. You’ll be in a restaurant, and some girls will walk in and you can tell that they really want to be sexy. It’s written on their faces because that’s all they want to show. There’s a fear that one might not look further.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“To me, I approach a small-budget, artsy, European movie the same way as a big commercial Hollywood movie. That’s the most important thing. Hollywood usually represents this big dream in people’s minds, but to me, it’s just hard work.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“My face changes when I wear make-up; I don’t recognise myself.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“It is true that women in Paris never put on make-up. It shocked me when I first got there – then I realised how much I liked it.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I’m very careful. I think about everything. Some people go, ‘Oh, I went out and bought something and didn’t realise how much it was,’ but there’s no such thing with me. I always think about the future because I never want to go backwards.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“I never exercise, and I eat everything.”
― Olga Kurylenko
“People say, ‘Where do you live?’ and I say that theoretically, I live in London, but basically that’s just where I go to change my suitcase. Otherwise, I’m always flying somewhere.”
― Olga Kurylenko
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