Olga Kurylenko

Biography of Olga Kurylenko

Olga Kurylenko was born on November 14, 1979 in Berdyansk, Ukraine.

She is the daughter of Konstantin Kurylenko, a Ukrainian, and Marina Alyabusheva, a Russian. Her parents separated when she Olga was three years old. She grew up with her mother, an art teacher, and her grandmother Raisa.

She did not receive a formal education during her childhood, although she learned to play the piano, arts, languages. She multilingual, she speaks Ukrainian, English, French, Spanish and Russian.

She acquired French nationality in 2001.

At the age of thirteen, during a vacation in Moscow, she was discovered by a talent scout who suggested she be a model. Three years later she settled in Paris, appearing on the covers of fashion magazines such as Elle, Marie Claire, Madame Figaro and Vogue. She was the face of several cosmetic brands and clothing companies.

Her acting career began in 2005. She received the Certificate of Excellence Award at the 2006 Brooklyn Film Festival (BFF) for her performance in L'Annulaire.

In 2007, she played the role of Nika Boronina in the film adaptation of the video game Hitman (2007). She was a Bond girl in the twenty-second James Bond film, Quantum of Solace (2008). She later starred in To the Wonder (2012), alongside Ben Affleck, Javier Bardem and Rachel McAdams. She worked on the science fiction film Oblivion (2013), starring Tom Cruise.

In 2018, she acted alongside Rowan Atkinson in the comedy Johnny English Strikes Again. In that same year, she starred in The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, directed by Terry Gilliam, which would be followed by: The Room (2019), The Translators (2020) and The Bay ofSilence (2020).

During 2021, she appeared in The Hunting, Sentinelle, and the superhero film Black Widow, produced by Marvel Studios.

In 2000, she married French fashion photographer Edric van Mol. She was divorced four years later.

During 2006, she married the American businessman Damian Gabrielle, whom she divorced at the end of 2007.

She later became involved with the English actor and writer Max Benitz, with whom she had her son Alexander Max Horatio.