Cover Story: Olga Kurylenko & Gemma Arterton
Double Your Pleasure

Burned by the death of his double-crossing girlfriend Vesper Lynd, James Bond may never love again. But that doesn’t mean he can’t have some fun. Enter the franchise’s two new Bond Girls, Ukrainian spitfire Olga Kurylenko and English acting phenom Gemma Arterton

Ever since 1962’s Dr. No, when Ursula Andress emerged dripping wet from the sparkling Caribbean sea clad only in a white bikini and a hunting knife, a pantheon of Bond Girls have steamed up 007’s perilous missions.

As iconic as the gadgets, shaken-not-stirred vodka martinis, bespoke tuxedo and Walther PPK, the Bond Girls are always close at hand, always luscious, always libidinous. Whether taking off their clothes or taking a bullet for Bond, they have remained instrumental as 007 keeps “the British end up.” But as Casino Royale and now Quantum of Solace have reinvented Bond for the 21st century, the Bond Girls have undergone a similar evolution.

“Women’s roles have changed so much in the last 40 years that today, a lot of women are running the world,” explains director Marc Forster, on the Pinewood Studios set of Quantum of Solace. “So they can’t simply just be a beautiful object anymore...they have to be a three-dimensional character and represent the equal.”

Considering Quantum of Solace is a sequel, picking up exactly 20 minutes after Casino Royale ended with Bond brokenhearted and seething over the death of his double-crossing love Vesper Lynd, there are hints of less romance for the notorious ladies’ man this time around. “We felt Bond could not immediately fall into another relationship,” offers Bond producer Michael G. Wilson. “So we needed someone who had her own agenda and probably could not form a relationship either because of her situation.”

Joaquin Cosio, Mathieu Amalric and Kurylenko

Enter Olga Kurylenko, the stunning 28-year-old Ukrainian-born actor and former model who plays one of the film’s two Bond Girls, the rogue agent Camille. Like Bond, she is obsessed with revenge, also targeting the mysterious Dominic Greene (played by acclaimed French actor Mathieu Amalric). “Camille is so focused on what she’s undertaking, she doesn’t care about meeting a boyfriend or something,” explains Kurylenko between takes on the Quantum of Solace set. “Camille is a strong, feisty and very independent woman. She’s almost like an equivalent to Bond. She’s not like other Bond Girls that she’s this poor thing he has to protect. She kick-boxes, fights and fires guns...she’s a pretty tough girl.”

Beating out more than a thousand actors, Kurylenko received word she had the role just last Christmas Eve, necessitating a two-month crash course in stunt and weapons training. “They kept pushing and pushing me, but I was glad they did because I was able to do all the fight scenes myself without a stunt double,” says Kurylenko, proudly rolling up her sleeve to show me some of her bruises. “They made me learn how to strip a gun apart and then put it back together.... I actually became quite good at it. I can do it in eight seconds flat!”

 
Kurylenko admits her greatest accomplishment, however, was overcoming her fear of heights as she reluctantly agreed to skydive for one of the film’s pivotal scenes. “I like to try things that seem impossible,” she says. This from a woman who escaped abject poverty in the former USSR as a teenager after a chance encounter in Moscow propelled her to a successful modelling career in Paris. “I don’t want things in life to be easy...then what am I going to overcome?”

Forster says that tenacity is what immediately distinguished Kurylenko from the throngs of hopefuls. “What really surprised me about the audition process was how many beautiful women there are in the world,” says Forster. “But there are very few who I felt could go beyond the beauty and feel real and truly genuine. And every time I looked in Olga’s eyes, there was something very truthful and somewhat pained...it might have to do with what she went through in her life.”

Kurylenko proved a perfect match for Daniel Craig’s more damaged and darker 007. “Bond is a psychologically handicapped human being and not stable,” explains Forster. “There is this pain and isolation and sadness about him. And so there needed to be an honest reality on screen between Bond and Camille.”

But rest assured, old habits die hard for James Bond. Craig admits the film doesn’t shy away from 007’s womanizing. “That’s who James Bond is,” he states. “But what we learned from Casino Royale is how this one woman came to form his future behaviour that we’ve come to know...”

“I mean, objectifying beauty is not a problem for me,” continues Craig about the bevy of Bond babes. “Making things sexy, whether it’s men or women, I don’t have a problem with.” But when it comes to the Bond Girls, “I want to see a relationship,” he adds. “I want to see something firing off each other ’cause I think that’s where the sexiness is, and that’s where the sexual tension is in a movie. So getting Olga into this movie has been very important...that relationship is quite complicated.”

However, Bond does indulge in some hot sex scenes with British actor Gemma Arterton, who plays MI6’s Agent Fields. “[She] and Bond very much come together and have this fling,” says Craig. “It’s a mutually beneficial experience.”

Daniel Craig with Arterton

Arterton describes Agent Fields as a throwback to the retro Bond Girls of the ’60s. “The whole idea with my character was we want her to be a typical Ian Fleming Bond Girl with a somewhat modern twist,” says Arterton, 22, who landed the role only six months after graduating from London’s prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In fact, Arterton has quickly amassed a vast body of work with leading roles in the BBC’s Capturing Mary, ITV’s Lost in Austen, as well as Brit flicks St. Trinian’s and Guy Ritchie’s crime thriller RocknRolla. And immediately after wrapping Quantum of Solace, Arterton hightailed it to Morocco to begin shooting Jerry Bruckheimer’s epic adventure Prince of Persia as the romantic lead opposite Jake Gyllenhaal. Arterton says she’s still shocked by her rapid success. “I’ve done eight movies within a year from leaving drama school — it’s all happening so quickly I haven’t had time to really comprehend it all,” she admits, shaking her head in disbelief. “It’s pretty insane what’s happening to me...I still don’t know how this all happened so fast. It’s a bit mad, but brilliant at the same time.”

The daughter of a welder and a cleaner from Kent, Arterton says her parents are keeping her grounded throughout this dizzying experience. “They’re enormously proud of me, but certainly keep me in check,” she says with a laugh. “They come from a working class background, so they didn’t get to do what they wanted because they didn’t have the opportunities…. When they found out I was going to be a Bond Girl, they were so excited. I mean, being British, the Bond films were always a huge part of growing up in my household.”

Which is why Arterton relished paying homage to the “classic” Bond Girls of yesteryear. “Agent Fields is much more a fun character, with some very cheeky, cheesy lines,” she says, smiling. “I always loved those Sean Connery-era Bond Girls, like Honor Blackman and Diana Rigg, who were a bit priggish and snooty on the outside, but were really kinda’ naughty inside,” says Arterton.

“Because at the end of the day,” she adds, “it is a James Bond film after all!”

David Giammarco is a print and broadcast journalist and the author of For Your Eyes Only: Behind the Scenes of the James Bond Films.

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