Anastasiya Khabenskaya (photo by: rian.ru)

Anastasiya Khabenskaya, a radio journalist and actress married to popular Russian actor Konstantin Khabensky, died from a brain tumor in Los Angeles this week. Mrs. Khabenskaya developed the tumor in 2007, while pregnant with the couple's only son, Ivan. She was treated in the best hospitals in Moscow and Los Angeles. The couple reportedly celebrated a simple, private Russian Orthodox wedding before Khabenskaya passed away this week, surrounded by her husband and mother.

A 36 year-old native of St. Petersburg, Russia and a former electrical engineering student turned street musician, Konstantin Khabensky is best known to American audiences for his role in the Angelina Jolie action-adventure movie Wanted. Russians know him best as the star of Admiral (Kolchak), The Irony of Fate 2 (Ironi Sudbi 2), Night Watch (Nochnoy Dozor), Day Watch (Dnevnoy Dozor) and other Russian blockbusters.

Click here to read the story in Russian at the RIA Novosti website. Click on the extended post to read Konstantin Khabensky's biography from the IMDB website:

Konstantin Khabensky is a Russian actor known for his work in horror flicks Nochnoy Dozor (2004) and Dnevnoy Dozor (2006).

He was born Konstantin Yuryevich Khabensky on January 11, 1972, in Leningrad, USSR (now St. Petersburg, Russia). His father, Yuri Khabensky, and his mother, Tatiana Gennadievna (nee Nikulina), were engineers-hydrologists. Young Konstantin Khabensky studied electronics at the Leningrad Technical School of Aviation Electronics and Automatics. He dropped out on the third year after deciding that electronics was not for him.

He played guitar on the Nevsky Prospect as a struggling street musician, then was a stage technician at the Theatre-Studio "Subbota" in Leningrad. From 1990 to 1995 Khabensky studied acting at the St. Peterburg Institute of Theater, Music and Cinematography. There his classmates were Mikhail Porechenkov, Andrei Zibrov, and Mikhail Trukhin. In 1995, Khabensky graduated from the class of Veniamin Filshtinsky, as an actor. He had a five-month stint at the Raikin's Theatre of Satire in Moscow, but there he was deprived of any serious work, so he returned to St. Petersburg.

Khabensky made his film debut in Na Kogo Bog Poschlet (1994). He shot to fame in Russia after co-starring in "Uboynaya sila" (2000), a popular series about crime in St. Petersburg, Russia. Khabensky ascended to international fame with the leading role as Anton in the popular Russian vampire franchise, Nochnoy Dozor (2004), and the second installment, Dnevnoy Dozor (2006), by director Timur Bekmambetov and based on eponymous books by Sergei Lukyanenko.

From 1996 to 2003 Khabensky was a member of the troupe at the St. Petersburg Theatre of Lensovet. There he worked together with his former classmates Mikhail Porechenkov, Mikhail Trukhin and Andrei Zibrov under directorship of Yuri Butusov. In 2003 Khabensky and Porechenkov were invited by Oleg Tabakov to work with the Moscow Art Theatre. There Khabensky has been playing the leading role in "White Guard", a classic play by Mikhail A. Bulgakov. He also appeared as Claudius in the Shakespeare's "Hamlet" directed by Yuri Butusov.

Khabensky made appearances on stage at the St. Petersburg Theatre of Lensovet in the leading role in a contemporary play 'V ozhidanii Godo', and as Kaligula in the eponymous play by Albert Camus.

Konstantin Khabensky has been married to radio-journalist Anastasiya Khabenskaya. He has homes in both Russian capitals: Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Khabensky as Anton Gorodetsky, the flawed hero of Day Watch

Khabensky lived in Moscow, his hometown of St. Petersburg, and Los Angeles, where he and his frequent director and collaborator Timur Bekmambetov filmed Wanted and were reportedly working on the third installment in the dozori trilogy, Twilight Watch

In August 1980, a new film was released in the Soviet Union, shattering any blockbuster records in the USSR and becoming an iconic feat of Soviet cinematography - "Pirati 20 Veka» (Пираты XX Века) – (20th Century Pirates). This was the first domestically produced "boyevik" - an action thriller - and it became an instant and long-lasting success.

The film, almost three-decades old, has the feel of being "ripped off the headlines." Today's Russia is taking an active role in combat international piracy off the coast of Somalia. Its Navy is participating in protection, search and destroy missions, and along with its American and British counterparts, and has already enjoyed limited success.

Russia's mission is important for at least two reasons. First, after months of belligerency with the West over its war in US-backed Georgia, Russia is seen as a responsible stakeholder and a key state providing security in violent seaways. Second, the fact that Russian blue-water navy is operating freely half-way around the world brings much-needed pride to the Navy that has been slow to modernize, slow to change and has only recently begun to assume it’s Cold War swagger of being capable of operating anywhere around the globe.

"20th Century Pirates" literally exploded on the domestic scene - the film had a very "un-Soviet" look to it. 'Till that time, the action thriller style has been a solely Western monopoly, and films with chases, explosions, gun fights, outright violence and international intrigue - all taking place in exotic locations - were never before produced in the USSR.

The film plot could have been taken from today's newspapers - or from the headlines 30 years ago. A Soviet tanker with a large load of opium for the pharmaceutical industry is leaving a South Asian port through the Straits of Malacca. Shortly afterward, its crew picks up a shipwreck survivor. All was not what it seemed - the actor playing the survivor was "Soviet Bruce Lee"- Talgat Nigmatulin, a USSR martial arts champion. His character secretly destroys the ships' communication equipment as the Russian ship is suddenly attacked by what appeared to be large luxury yacht passing nearby. Most Soviet crew dies in a violent gun battle with the well-armed pirates. The opium is transferred on the pirate ship, while the Soviet vessel is sunk. However, a few crew members manage to survive and decide to track down and exact revenge on the pirates. The Soviet survivors make their way to the pirate hideout, somewhere amidst numerous islands near the Indonesian archipelago. There, the real action starts.

The film thrilled the Soviet moviegoers of all ages. Practically every teenager in the USSR in the 1980s has seen the film at least several times. According to official data, every third person in the USSR managed to see the film in its year of release. With repeat viewers, that number reached almost 100 million people. After the first screening of the film for the state censorship agency in the Central Communist Party Committee of the USSR, the film was "cursed out" and almost shelved. The probable reason was the movie's very "American" look and absence of any real Communist propaganda of any type.

However, one of the agency's officials took the matters into his own hands and sent the copy of the film to the summer home of Leonid Brezhnev, then leader of the Soviet Union. Brezhnev got very excited after watching the action thriller, and shortly afterward the film was released country-wide. That year, Soviet officials often had to cancel morning showings, since students of all ages would skip school just to watch the film.

"20th Century Pirates" remains the highest-grossing and most-attended film for the entire 70 years of Soviet cinema. Not surprisingly, it still looks modern even today. And while some parts of it now may seem "campy," it is still relevant to today's global events, when every week, newspapers report of yet another international vessel captured by the Somali pirates, prompting US, European or Russian naval vessels to give chase. It would not be surprising that a sequel to the Soviet film is somewhere in the works or is on the drawing map in Hollywood- after all, the story simply writes itself.

A clip from the movie (action part)

This article originally appeared in Real Clear Politics

U.S. companies can't drill there - but foreign firms may be drilling in the Straits of Florida very soon

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Republicans urged the Democrat majority in the U.S. Congress to allow American oil companies to "drill here, drill now, pay less" amidst record gasoline prices. One of the claims Republicans made was that the federal ban on offshore oil drilling, particularly off the coast of Florida, was ridiculous because Cuba had already leased drilling rights to Chinese companies. Thus, Chinese firms would be drilling 90 miles off the coast of the U.S., while American laws would prevent American oil majors from doing the same.

At that time, Democrats dismissed the GOP claims about Chinese drilling as apocryphal, and said that China hadn't drilled for any oil in or around Cuba and that more domestic drilling wouldn't reduce gasoline prices for consumers at the pump. Later on during the campaign, as gasoline prices peaked in July 2008 and U.S. public opinion polls shifted decisively in favor of drilling, the Democrat majority in Congress allowed the long-time drilling ban to slip. Nonetheless, Florida and other states retained their bans on offshore oil and gas development.

One wonders if the news today that Russian oil majors are also considering development in the Gulf of Mexico will affect the debate over drilling in the Florida legislature and on Capitol Hill. The announcement by a Russian diplomat came ahead of President Dimitry Medvedev's state visit to Havana, part of a presidential tour planned through Latin America.

President-elect Barack Obama has already announced that he will review several Bush-era executive orders, including the President's recent decision to abrogate the executive order banning offshore oil drilling. Lower gasoline prices due to the global economic slowdown (and some analysts claim, the bursting of a speculative bubble in commodities) has reduced the pressure on Democrats to allow drilling -- for now. But one wonders whether China, Russia, India and other rising economic powers will have much interest in joining a U.S. and Western European-led carbon "cap and trade" scheme, the favorite policy of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other leading Democrats, to reduce worldwide CO2 emissions that may contribute to global warming.

Click on the extended post to read excerpts from the Associated Press story.

Russian firms may soon join China's Sinopec in developing oil reserves in Cuba - either onshore or offshore

Official: Russians want to search for oil off Cuba

HAVANA – Russian oil companies could soon begin searching for oil in deep Gulf of Mexico waters off Cuba, a top diplomat said just days before Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visits the island.

Russian oil companies have "concrete projects" for drilling in Cuba's part of the gulf, said Mijail Kamynin, Russia's ambassador to Cuba, to the state-run business magazine Opciones.

Kamynin also said Russian companies would like to help build storage tanks for crude oil and to modernize Cuban pipelines, as well as play a role in Venezuelan efforts to refurbish a Soviet-era refinery in the port city of Cienfuegos, according the article published this weekend.

Medvedev comes to former Cold War ally Cuba on Thursday, part of a tour of Latin America to strengthen his country's economic and political ties in the region. Kamynin said trade between Russia and the island would top $400 million this year.

Washington's nearly 50-year-old trade embargo prohibits U.S. companies from investing on the island. But Cuba's state-run oil concern has signed joint operating agreements with companies from several countries to explore waters that Cuban scientists claim could contain reserves of up to 20 billion barrels of oil.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva visited Cuba in October for the signing of agreements allowing state-run Petroleo Brasileiro SA to invest $8 million initially for a seven-year, deep-water exploration project north of the famed beach resort of Varadero. If reserves are confirmed, Brazil would produce oil and natural gas recovered there over the next 25 years.

Go to the Associated Press website to read the rest of this story.

Pirates based in lawless regions of Somalia have become increasingly brazen in their attacks on merchant ships in the Indian Ocean.

The Russian Navy announced today that it is sending another warship to the Indian Ocean to protect surface shipping from pirates. The Russian frigate is being dispatched after pirate gangs based in Somalia seized a supertanker near the Horn of Africa. The Sirius Star, a Saudi-flagged supertanker carrying two million barrels of crude, was seized this week by pirates operating nearly 500 miles off the coast of eastern Africa.

The Star is one of the largest vessels of its kind in the world, roughly the size of a U.S. aircraft carrier, and is manned by a 25-man multinational crew. Somali pirates are demanding millions in ransom money to release the ship and its crew. Unless their demands are met within ten days, the pirates have threatened to harm the crewmembers and hinted at causing a catastrophic oil spill. The Somali pirates are employing not only the traditional cigarette speedboats to attack merchantmen close to the coast, but also "mother ships", GPS devices and satellite phones that can extend their reach hundreds of miles offshore.

Click on the extended post to read more.

The Russian Navy frigate Neustrashimy (Fearless)

Russia's Navy already tangled with the East African pirates earlier this year, when Somali gangs attempted to seize a Danish-flagged cargo ship in the Indian Ocean. Russia dispatched the frigate Neustrashimy to the Indian Ocean after the Faina, a Ukrainian-flagged freighter carrying tanks and heavy weaponry, was seized by Somali pirates on September 25. The pirates are demanding a $5-million ransom in exchange for the release of the Ukrainian and Russian crewmembers. The Indian Navy also reported this week that it sank a pirate "mother ship" on the high seas when the pirates threatened to attack the frigate INS Tabar. The Tabar was built by Russians in a St. Petersburg shipyard and exported to India.

As the world's second largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia, Russia clearly has a strong interest in protecting tankers on the high seas. Russia has also pursued closer ties to Middle Eastern governments in recent years, and therefore has an additional incentive to protect its Gulf Arab partners. The Sirius Star is a Saudi-flagged vessel and the Saudis are reportedly negotiating with the hijackers before resorting to force. Around 20,000 merchant ships pass through the waters east of Africa and south of the Arabian peninsula every year, making the area a strategic crossroads between Europe, Africa, and Asia.

After hundreds of hijackings or attacks this year, the international community is beginning to take the threat of piracy seriously and is fed up with the pirates and their arrogant demands. The European Union has created the first anti-piracy flotilla in its history, while Russian, French, British, Indian and American warships and marines are already patrolling the East African coast. The United Nations passed a new resolution calling for travel and economic sanctions against Somali officials, even though Somalia currently has no central government to sanction.

Unfortunately, Somalia is best known to Americans as the site of the notorious Battle of Mogadishu, which took the lives of 19 American servicemen. The 24-hour firefight was depicted in the bestselling book by Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down, and the 2001 Ridley Scott film of the same title. Many Somalis complained that the Hollywood production depicted their countrymen as trigger-happy savages and got many facts wrong, including tragic American errors that led to the deaths of Somali civilians.

Since American and United Nations forces pulled out in 1994, Somalia has been plagued by tribal violence and the widespread threat of starvation. After 9/11, the son of the warlord Mohammed Fara Aided, whose militia fought U.S. Army Rangers and Delta force commandos in 1993, reportedly asked the Americans for help against tribal enemies he claimed were harboring members of Al-Qaeda. U.S. Marines and French special forces are currently based within striking distance of Somalia, in the tiny state of Djibouti, and continue to raid Somali territory to hunt down suspected Al-Qaeda members. Meanwhile, Somali gangs have become increasingly bold as millions of dollars in ransom payments have trickled into Puntland and other regions, allowing the pirates to bribe officials and making them folk heroes to many local tribesmen.

Once again, just as in the weeks immediately following 9/11, it appears that the U.S. and Russia are facing a common set of terrorist and criminal adversaries striking out at the civilized world from lawless regions. It remains to be seen if recognition of this fact will bring the U.S., Russia, India and the Europeans closer together in cooperation. While the dispute over a U.S. missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic continues to create trans-Atlantic headlines, last week Russia announced that Germany would be permitted to ship weapons to NATO troops in Afghanistan using the Russian railway system. As the situation on the ground continues to deteriorate in Pakistan, where many tribal regions seem to be loyal to the Taliban, Russia may prove to be a vital logistical lifeline for NATO in Central Asia.

Downtown Moscow near the Kremlin
Photo by: Yuri Mamchur

Newsweek Interactive, the consulting firm A.T. Kearney and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs have published an index of the world's top global cities in the Nov/Dec 2008 issue of Foreign Policy magazine. The FP is a publication of the Washington-D.C. based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

According to the A.T. Kearney survey, a global city is defined as an urban center that "excels across multiple dimensions" of human achievement, with different rankings for leading cities in business, finance, education, and governance. Some cities came off better in the rankings due to their historic position as global economic hubs, such as New York, London, and Tokyo, while others offered more lifestyle attractions, such as Toronto and Los Angeles. But all of the established megacities in the developed world have increasing competition from emerging market boomtowns like Beijing, Bangalore, Sao Paulo, and Shenzhen. As the capital of the Russian Federation, Moscow found its spot in the combined rankings at #19 out of 60 global cities, situated in between Vienna and Shanghai.

Click on the extended post to read more.

Bloomberg news Moscow bureau chief near the Kremlin, 2007

Moscow scored highest on "the best cities to get culture" ranking, at no. 6, and no. 15 on "the best cities to get a degree". While the cultural category may seem subjective, depending on one's definition of culture, the educational rankings are based on objective criteria such as the percentage of inhabitants with university degrees, and the number of international students, international schools, and top global universities in each city. Moscow State University (MSU) and other institutions in the Russian capital have attracted large numbers of foreign students, particularly in engineering and medical sciences.

In recent years Moscow's retail, industrial, service and construction industries have drawn thousands of expats from Europe and hundreds of thousands of migrants from Russian regions to the city. According to the 2006 census, the number of legally registered residents in Moscow city limits exceeded 10.4 million people. The actual population, including undocumented workers from the former Soviet republics, could be substantially higher. The Moscow region surrounding the city has 6 million inhabitants.

Of cities ranked by A.T. Kearney in the U.S., New York (still no. 1 in spite of the financial crisis), Los Angeles (6), Chicago (8), Washington (11), and San Francisco (15) scored the highest in the overall rankings.

You can read more about the methodology A.T. Kearney used to generate their rankings here. Click on the photos section of Russia Blog to view more photos of the Russian capital.

A Russian soldier in Georgia

The International Herald Tribune has done some of the best reporting about Russia in recent months, including C.J. Chivers recently published analysis questioning many initial reports from the August 2008 war in Georgia. The Georgia War revealed that the Russian military still has sharp teeth - at least when fighting an inferior opponent on its own borders.

However, the war also revealed that even the Russian Army's elite formations were fielding 1980s vintage equipment, and did not have night vision goggles or Global Positioning System (GPS) devices like some of their Georgian opponents. The lack of unmanned aerial vehicles also led to a Russian Air Force Tupolev bomber getting shot down on a routine reconaissance mission over Georgia, with the loss of the entire crew. Russian army commanders, like the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, were reduced to issuing battlefield orders over easily intercepted cellphone lines due to a shortage of secure radios.

In late October the IHT reported on large Russian military exercises then taking place across all eleven time zones of Russia, complete with ICBM tests (hat tip: former Sovietologist and blogger Thomas P.M. Barnett). The IHT added that most American officials in the Pentagon and Bush Administration considered these changes in the Russian military's organization to be routine and not a cause for alarm in the West. If anything, President Medvedev's ambitious plans to modernize the armed forces may have to be scaled back due to a weak ruble, falling oil prices, and declining tax revenues into the Russian federal budget.

Click on the extended post to read an excerpt from the IHT article. Click on the Human Rights section of Russia Blog to read more about the problems of brutal hazing (dedovshina) and low morale in the Russian army.

Russian armored vehicles driving through Moscow during Victory Day 2008

Russia striving to modernize military, U.S. notes with interest, not alarm
By Thom Shanker
Monday, October 20, 2008

WASHINGTON: As they tracked Russian military maneuvers in recent days, the American government's career Kremlin-watchers might have been forgiven for wondering if they were seeing recycled newsreels from the worst of the bad old days.

A huge exercise, called Stability 2008, spread tens of thousands of troops, thousands of vehicles and scores of combat aircraft across nearly all 11 time zones of Russian territory in the largest war game since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

There was no specified enemy, but the Russian forces appeared to be enacting a nationwide effort to quell unrest along Russia's southern border — and to repulse an American-led attack by NATO forces, according to experts in Moscow and here.

In a grim finale, commanders launched three intercontinental ballistic missiles, the type that can carry multiple nuclear warheads. It was a clear signal of the drastic endgame the Kremlin might consider should its conventional forces not hold. One of the missiles flew more than 7,100 miles, allowing Russian officials to claim they had set a distance record.

If these images of Russian power projection appeared drawn from the dark decades of Dr. Strangelove, the response from Washington was anything but.

When asked to assess what seemed to be a Russian resurgence, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have provided the same sanguine response, echoed down through the ranks of government analysts who have spent years reading obscure Russian military journals and scrutinizing classified satellite photographs.

The Russian military fell to third world standards from neglect and budget cuts in the turbulent years when Boris Yeltsin was president, they say. The new Kremlin leadership is working to create a force that can actually defend the nation's interests.

The military has embarked upon a program to buy modern weapons, improve training and health care for troops, trim a bloated officer corps and create the first professional class of sergeant-level, small-unit leaders since World War II.

Which is not to say that the United States will stop judging Russian behavior in light of what it considers a clumsy, ill-advised and unnecessary invasion of the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

Yet policymakers also say the Kremlin's efforts at military modernization should not prevent cooperation on mutual concerns, including countering terrorism and halting nuclear proliferation.

Even a high-profile speech three weeks ago by President Dmitri A. Medvedev, ordering a military modernization program and the largest increases in defense spending since the death of the old USSR, was viewed here as short on substance and designed more for a domestic political agenda.

Medvedev declared that by 2020, Russia would construct new types of warships and an unspecified air and space defense system. Military spending, he said, will leap by 26 percent next year, bringing it to 1.3 trillion rubles (about $50 billion), its highest level since the collapse of the Soviet Union — but still a small fraction of American military spending.

Medvedev pledged that Russia would shore up its nuclear deterrence and upgrade its conventional forces to a state of "permanent combat readiness."

American experts were unimpressed. "Russia is prone to make fairly grandiose announcements about its military," said a Defense Department official who discussed government analyses on condition of anonymity. "These programs have long been in the works. They are not new plans. They are not new programs."

Even so, veteran analysts of Russian military affairs acknowledge that a military renaissance would allow the Moscow leadership to increase political pressure on former Soviet republics, now independent, as well as former Warsaw Pact allies that embraced NATO after the collapse of communism.

"What the Russian leadership has discovered is proof of an old maxim: that a foreign policy without a credible military is no foreign policy," said Dale Herspring, a scholar on Russian military affairs at Kansas State University.

Eugene Rumer, of the National Defense University here, said events of recent weeks were "not a sign, really, of the Russian military being reborn, but more of a Russia being able to flex what relatively little muscle it has on the global scale, and to show that it actually matters."

One example is how Russia's navy is seeking to display global reach. A flotilla of warships, including the nuclear battle cruiser Peter the Great, is under sail for exercises next month with Venezuela.

Russia has also announced more than $1 billion in new arms deals with the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez.

"This Venezuela adventure is basically Russia's payback for what they consider the humiliation of American ships' operating in the Black Sea during the war in Georgia," said Mikhail Tsypkin, of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. "This is to annoy the United States."

Some of the steps undertaken to wrench the Russian military out of mediocrity resemble changes in the American military over several decades.

Russia plans for its ground forces to move to a system designed for the deployment of brigades, rather than bulkier division or corps headquarters — nearly copying the United States Army's approach.

The Russian military also plans to offer pay and housing incentives to attract noncommissioned officers -- the valuable class of sergeants -- to make a long-term career of military service.

While not as drastic as the move by the post-Vietnam American military to switch from the draft to an all-volunteer force, the plan would shift Russia further from reliance on one-year conscripts, who are not in uniform long enough to master even basic skills.

Just last week, the Russian military leadership announced it would further reduce the number of people in uniform, to about 1 million from the current 1.1 million, far below the 4 million-strong military at the end of the cold war.

Most significant, according to American government officials, is a four-year plan to reduce to 150,000 a Russian officer corps that now numbers 400,000, a shrinking that is certain to produce significant opposition within the senior ranks.

The Russian General Staff will be trimmed, and the number of generals is planned to fall to 900 from the current 1,100. But in an acknowledgment that the general officer corps can slow the pace of change throughout the military, most of those reductions will occur through retirement.

The Kremlin knows that its military bureaucracy is riddled with corruption, Pentagon officials say.

Experts here say that audits ordered after Vladimir Putin took over from Yeltsin in 2000 found that 40 percent of the budget for some weapons programs and salaries was lost to theft and waste.

Click here to read the rest of the story over at the International Herald Tribune website.

Daniel Craig and Olga Kurylenko starring in the new Bond film Quantum of Solace

The new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, is facing a great opening weekend. The previous Bond film, Casino Royale, gained significant attention of the female audience, compliments of shirtless Daniel Craig coming out of the ocean. The new 007 film is guaranteed major success with the male audience, not only because of the numerous car chases and explosions, but mainly because of the Ukrainian model and actress Olga Kurylenko. Coincidentally, November 14 is Olga’s 29th birthday! Even though the Communist Party of the Russian Federation condemned Olga and called her “a traitor,” all she’s betraying is her real identity. In the movie she is a Bolivian, not Ukrainian, and a fighter, not a model.

Olga Konstantinovna Kurylenko (Ольга Костянтинівна Куриленко) was born on November 14, 1979, in Berdyansk, Ukraine, Soviet Union. Her mother, Marina Alyabysheva, divorced her father, Konstantin Kurylenko, soon after her birth. After the divorce, her mother struggled to survive as an art teacher. Young Olga Kurylenko was brought up by her mother and her grandmother, Raisa. During her youth, Olga had a humbling experience of living in poverty; she had no choice but to wear rags and had to darn the holes on her sweater. During the years in Ukraine she studied art, languages, did 7 years of musical school studying piano and went to a ballet studio until 13.

At age 13, Olga and her mother made a trip to Moscow. There she was scouted by an agent who approached her at a subway station and offered a job as a model. Initially, Olga's mother was suspicious, but eventually Olga made a good career choice and took training as a model in Moscow. By age 16, she was ready for the next step. She moved to Paris, learned French in six months, and was signed by the Madison agency. At age 18, Olga appeared on the cover of Glamour, then she graced magazine covers of Elle, Madame Figaro, Marie Claire, and Vogue, and also became the face of Lejaby lingerie, Bebe clothing, Clarins and Helena Rubinstein cosmetic companies.

In 1999, Olga married her friend, French photographer Cedric Van Mol and divorced him 3,5 years later. One day Olga presented herself to an acting agency. Eventually, she swapped the catwalk for celluloid, and her acting career took off. In 2005 she made her film debut as Iris, a sensual beauty in L'Annulaire (2005) by director Diane Bertrand.

Olga's cinematic roles have been notably steamy, and her natural beauty and explicit nudity attracted the attention of the male audiences. She appeared opposite Elijah Wood in Paris, je t'aime (2006) and as Le Sofia in Serpent (2006), then co-starred as Russian beauty Nika Boronina opposite Timothy Olyphant in Hitman (2007). She also appears as Mina Harud in the indy surveillance-thriller Tyranny (2008) and is billed as Camille, the Bond girl in Quantum of Solace (2008), a sequel to Casino Royale (2006).

Olga Kurylenko with Timothy Olyphant in Hitman

When she arrived for her initial audition in Paris last year, Kurylenko realized the script she had been given in advance ''wasn't the right one, not the text they were using that day.'' In order to play catch-up, the actress let others audition in front of her. ''All I could do was listen and try to pick up the correct lines, but in the end I really had to improvise a lot.

''Maybe because of that, it made me relax, knowing I had nothing to lose -- figuring there was no way I'd get the part since I was so clearly unprepared.''

Olga Kurylenko in Kiev, Ukraine

Imagine her surprise when she got a callback for a second audition, and then a third one -- ultimately doing a scene with Daniel Craig in London. ''By that point I was really nervous, because you know you're close to getting it, but you still haven't got it. You suddenly get your hopes up but don't want to want it too much, in case they pick someone else.''

An added challenge for her was the fact her character ''is a Bolivian, and I knew I was competing with actresses who were Hispanic. Spanish was their first language. ''They didn't have to fake the accent. To make sure I was convincing as a Bolivian, I worked hard on my accent every day for two weeks before I had to audition with Daniel.''

Olga Kurylenko and Daniel Craig on a Bloomberg outdoor deck in Moscow

After she got the good news she had won the role of Camille, Kurylenko underwent intensive stunt training -- to prepare her for several scenes involving rough fighting.

''The funny part is I have a big fight scene with Joaquin [Cosio, who plays the corrupt and very vicious Bolivian General Medrano] -- and he's such a teddy bear in real life, a real sweetie! Even though the stunt coaches spend months teaching you how to do certain movements so you don't get hurt, at the end of the day, certain things you have to do for real.''

In a climactic struggle with Cosio, Kurylenko said her co-star really did throw her around the room, violently pulling her hair. ''It did hurt, especially because you have to do about 20 takes of each scene. It's not the first time you fall that's so bad. It's when you fall on that same bruise, over and over again. That's the hard part, but it's what makes it all look real. When you hurt for real, you can communicate that pain in your acting.''