Olga Kurylenko, interview with the actress Filming Italy International Award 2026

At the ninth edition of Filming Italy Sardegna Festival 2026, Olga Kurylenko receives the Filming Italy International Award. Born in a small town in Ukraine, former model, Born in a small town in Ukraine, former model, Bond girl in “Quantum of Solace” and actress in films ranging from “Oblivion” to “The Death of Stalin”, Olga Kurylenko has built an international career that she herself still struggles to fully take in. The award, she says, is as much a surprise as it is an honor.

A long way from where she started

For Olga Kurylenko, receiving an international award carries a weight that goes beyond the recognition itself. “If someone told me as a little girl that I would be an international actress and that I would ever be getting these type of prizes, I would never believe it, because I come from so far away, from such a small town.” The path, she says, was never written for her the way it might be for others born closer to the world of cinema. “Normally it’s impossible for people like me and that come from where I come from.” The prize brings her back to appreciate what she has accomplished, something she admits she tends to underestimate. “It’s very humbling.”

Acting as therapy, then as a calling

Long before Paris and the modeling career, acting began as something much more private. As a shy child, Olga Kurylenko asked her mother to enroll her in an acting class, not to become an actress but as a way to open up. “It was more like a therapy for me. I had to stand on stage and I was shaking and I was scared and I was freaking out. Each time I had to step over the barrier, it was a violence I was doing to myself because it was against my nature, until it became my nature.” The transformation worked. “A lot of actors will tell you that they are by nature shy and then they just somehow go up there and they blossom.”

Emily Watson and the decision to create complex characters

The ambition to truly act, rather than simply appear on screen, came later, in Paris, through long hours spent in cinemas discovering performances that moved her. One above all stayed with her: Emily Watson in “Breaking the Waves”. “Movies like that persuaded me that I really should try and follow that path.” Not for fame, she clarifies, but for something harder to define: the desire to experience those feelings and to create characters that are complex.