Olga Kurylenko facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Olga Kurylenko
Ольга Куриленко
Kurylenko in 2019
Born	Olga Kostyantynivna Kurylenko (1979-11-14) 14 November 1979 (age 45) Berdyansk, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union
Citizenship	Ukraine (until 2001) France (naturalised in 2001)
Occupation	Actress model
Years active	1995–present
Spouse(s)	Cedric van Mol ​ ​ (m. 2000; div. 2004)​ Damian Gabrielle ​ ​ (m. 2006; div. 2007)​
Children	1

Olga Kostyantynivna Kurylenko (born November 14, 1979) is a talented actress who was born in Ukraine and later became a French citizen. She became very famous for her role as Camille Montes in the James Bond movie Quantum of Solace in 2008.

Before becoming a well-known actress, Olga had a very successful career as a model in Paris. She started focusing on acting in 2004. Her big break in movies came with the action film Hitman in 2007. Since then, she has starred in many different types of films, including the science fiction movie Oblivion (2013) with Tom Cruise, the superhero film Black Widow (2021) as Taskmaster, and the action thriller Extraction 2 (2023). She also appeared in the Netflix spy series Treason (2022).

Early Life and Family

Olga Kurylenko was born in a city called Berdyansk, which was part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in the Soviet Union at the time. Her father, Konstantin, is Ukrainian. Her mother, Marina Alyabusheva, is an art teacher and artist. Marina was born in Russia and has both Russian and Belarusian family roots.

Olga's parents divorced when she was three years old, and her mother raised her. She didn't see her father very often after the divorce, meeting him only a couple of times when she was eight and thirteen.

Olga's Career Journey

Olga Kurylenko at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival for her movie Seven Psychopaths

When Olga was 15, she moved to Moscow, a big city in Russia. A year later, at 16, she moved to Paris, France. In 1996, she signed a contract with a modeling agency in Paris called Madison. By the time she was 18, she had already been on the covers of famous magazines like Vogue and Elle. While working as a model in Paris, Olga helped support her mother back in Ukraine.

She also appeared on the covers of other popular magazines such as Madame Figaro and Marie Claire. She became the face of well-known brands like Clarins and Helena Rubinstein. Olga also modeled for fashion designers Roberto Cavalli and Kenzo.

In 2003, Olga appeared in a music video for the singer Seal, called "Love's Divine". Her acting career really started in France in 2004 with her first movie, The Ring Finger. For this role, she won an award at the 2006 Brooklyn International Film Festival. She then appeared in a part of the movie Paris, je t'aime (2006) with Elijah Wood. In the same year, she became the face of Kenzo's new perfume, Kenzo Amour, and has been in all their ads since.

Olga stopped modeling in 2006 after more than ten years to focus completely on acting.

Becoming a Movie Star

In 2007, Olga starred in the movie Hitman. She also had a smaller role in Max Payne.

Her most famous role came in 2008 when she played Bond girl Camille Montes in the James Bond film, Quantum of Solace. She won the role over many other actresses. In the movie, she plays a secret agent from Bolivia who works with James Bond to stop a bad organization and get revenge for her parents' deaths. After this movie, a politician from Russia wrote a letter to Olga. He said that the Soviet Union had given her free education and healthcare, and that by playing a Bond girl, she was betraying her Slavic background because Bond often fought against Soviet characters in his movies.

In Ukraine, the mayor of her hometown, Berdyansk, even suggested naming a street after her in 2008. She and her mother also met Ukraine's First Lady Kateryna Yushchenko.

Olga Kurylenko at the Sitges Film Festival in 2019

Olga continued to act in many different films. She was in the romantic drama To the Wonder with Ben Affleck and Rachel McAdams. She also starred in the science fiction film Oblivion with Tom Cruise. In 2014, she appeared in the historical drama The Water Diviner with Russell Crowe, who also directed the film. She played the headmistress in Vampire Academy.

In 2017, Olga was in the comedy film The Death of Stalin, playing a Soviet pianist. This movie was very popular with critics. The next year, she starred in The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018) and also played a Russian spy in the comedy Johnny English Strikes Again (2018) with Rowan Atkinson.

In 2021, she starred in the action thriller Sentinelle. In the same year, she joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) as Antonia Dreykov / Taskmaster in the movie Black Widow. She was also cast in the comedy heist film High Heat with Don Johnson.

Personal Life

Olga Kurylenko became a French citizen in 2001. She said this was a practical choice because it made traveling easier without needing a visa, compared to using a Ukrainian passport. She was married twice: first to French fashion photographer Cedric van Mol from 2000 to 2004, and then to American entrepreneur Damian Gabrielle from 2006 to 2007. She moved to London in 2009.

Olga has one son with her former partner, English actor and writer Max Benitz. She has publicly shown her support for Ukraine during the recent events there.

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Director	Notes
2005	The Ring Finger	Iris	Diane Bertrand
2006	Paris, je t'aime	The Vampire	Vincenzo Natali	Segment: Quartier de la Madeleine
	The Serpent	Sofia	Éric Barbier
2007	Hitman	Nika Boronina	Xavier Gens
2008	À l'est de moi		Bojena Horackova
	Max Payne	Natasha Sax	John Moore
	Quantum of Solace	Camille Montes	Marc Forster
2009	The Assassin Next Door	Galia	Danny Lerner
2010	Centurion	Etain	Neil Marshall
2011	There Be Dragons	Ildiko	Roland Joffé
	Land of Oblivion	Anya	Michale Boganim	Also executive producer
2012	Erased	Anna Brandt	Philipp Stölzl
	To the Wonder	Marina	Terrence Malick
	Seven Psychopaths	Angela	Martin McDonagh
2013	Oblivion	Julia Rusakova Harper	Joseph Kosinski
2014	Vampire Academy	Ellen Kirova	Mark Waters
	The November Man	Alice Fournier/Mira Filipova	Roger Donaldson
	The Water Diviner	Ayshe	Russell Crowe
2015	A Perfect Day	Katya	Fernando León de Aranoa
	Momentum	Alex Farraday	Stephen S. Campanelli
2016	The Correspondence	Amy	Giuseppe Tornatore
2017	The Death of Stalin	Maria Yudina	Armando Iannucci
	Gun Shy	Sheila	Simon West
2018	Just a Breath Away (Dans la brume)	Anna	Daniel Roby
	The Man Who Killed Don Quixote	Jacqui	Terry Gilliam
	Mara	Kate Fuller	Clive Tonge
	Johnny English Strikes Again	Ophelia	David Kerr
	The Emperor of Paris	Baroness Roxane of Giverny	Jean-François Richet
2019	L'Intervention	Jane Anderson	Fred Grivois
	The Room	Kate	Christian Volckman
	The Courier	The Courier	Zackary Adler
	The Translators	Katerina Anisinova	Rėgis Roinsard
2020	The Bay of Silence	Rosalind	Paula van der Oest
2021	Sentinelle	Klara	Julien Leclercq
	Black Widow	Antonia Dreykov / Taskmaster	Cate Shortland
2022	Vanishing	Alice	Denis Dercourt	Korean-French Film
	White Elephant	Vanessa Flynn	Jesse V. Johnson
	The Princess	Kai	Le-Van Kiet
	High Heat	Ana	Zach Golden
2023	Extraction 2	Mia	Sam Hargrave
	Boudica: The Queen of War	Boudica	Jesse V. Johnson
	Paradox Effect	Karina	Scott Weintrob
2024	Chief of Station	Krystyna Kowerski	Jesse V. Johnson
2025	Thunderbolts*	Antonia Dreykov / Taskmaster	Jake Schreier	Post-production
TBA	Afterburn	0TBA	J. J. Perry	Post-production
N/A	Empires of the Deep	The Mermaid Queen	Jonathan Lawrence, Michael French, & Scott Miller	Unreleased

Television

Video game

Awards and Nominations

See also

In Spanish: Olga Kurylenko para niños