All Hail Olga Kurylenko

Leaving aside her fairy-tale escape from a Ukrainian childhood of the sort of poverty and deprivation that's almost impossible to imagine in the West, going through two marriages by 29 is quite something.

Her first husband was the French fashion photographer Cedric Van Mol, whom she married at the age of 19 – the union lasted four years.

Three years ago, she married her second husband, the American mobile phone entrepreneur Damian Gabrielle, but that only lasted two years; they broke up just before Olga landed her role opposite Daniel Craig.

She is perplexed by all the fuss. People say: "How do you feel about the failure of your marriages?" ' she observes. I go, "Where is the failure? Is there something wrong with me, or do I not understand?"' She shrugs good-naturedly.

How is that a failure? You can divorce ten times and it's not a failure. I think it's already good that I meet these people – some people never meet anybody. If you spend your whole life married and unhappy and then you die, you're going to be, "Oh shit, I did this all for someone else and what about me?"' She shakes her head. I hate that society pushes us into a frame. I don't want to and I hope that I'll be able not to get broken into that.'

Her lack of fear of stigma is likeable and refreshing. She has the utter confidence of a perfectly beautiful, perfectly successful 29-year-old. So is remarriage on the cards? She shakes her head. It's so much easier to split up than to divorce,' she says.

It doesn't matter about marriage to me. My men wanted me to marry. And because I loved them I was like, "Oh, you want it? OK. I love you, so whatever matters to you will give pleasure to me."

But now I think of course you want to give pleasure to the people you love but I would explain' – she starts laughing – about how hard it's going to be when we split up. I think you can stay with the person a lot longer if you're not married: psychologically you feel free.'

Olga only met her father Konstantin when she was 13. She answered the door in her little Ukrainian town of Berdyansk one day and said, Mum, there is a man and I don't know who he is,' and her mother replied, Oh, I'll introduce you, that's your father.' Is she in touch with him now? No.' He must be amazed by her success. I don't know,' she says. I don't talk to him much. He now lives in Russia.'

Reading about her childhood is sobering stuff. She didn't have enough to eat and had to walk to school in shoes so worn they had no soles and her toes stuck out of the ends until she sewed them up. She shared a small, two-bedroom flat with her mother Marina, a teacher, and grandmother Raisa, a doctor. At 13, Olga was discovered by a model scout on the Moscow subway and by 16 she was modelling in Paris for the likes of Elle and Vogue.

But she doesn't come across as an arrogant model or a ballbreaker. In fact, she seems very normal and open, and particularly attached to her late grandmother. I really loved her,' she says. It's a very Russian-Ukrainian thing, living all together. You get three generations piled up in a house because they can't move out. But I loved it. I would never want to leave my grandmother alone. An old person, alone? It's not nice, especially when they gave their whole life to you. She died at home. She lived with us to her last breath.' She pauses, almost tearful. She did everything for me. I owe my life to her.' And her mother? This makes her laugh. My mother was working. She was the man.'

I ask if they had enough to eat. She looks away, distressed. No,' she says. Food was tough. I didn't eat the most yummy food every day. It was just, you know, boiled grain.' She laughs awkwardly. But it filled me up.' She looks at me with her green eyes. In those times, you couldn't even dream. Whatever you wanted to become you couldn't even dream, because it was just impossible. It was, "Oh, you want to do that?

Well, forget about it, you can't do it." When I went to Paris I felt I could try. Maybe this is your only opportunity to try, and if it doesn't work I'm going to come back in a week, but I'm going to see the Eiffel Tower, some museums; if it doesn't work I'll have had a week in Paris. That's how you take it.'

She was an instant success, becoming the face of several cosmetics and fashion lines before deciding to pursue acting. She made her film debut in 2005's L'Annulaire, a moody, erotic film about a girl having an affair with her boss, for which she won Best Actress at the Brooklyn International Film Festival.

She then starred alongside Elijah Wood in Paris, je t'aime, a collection of vignettes about love in the French capital, and with Mark Wahlberg in cop thriller Max Payne, before landing the part of Camille.

A triumph for a girl too poor as a kid even to go to the movies – she saw her first Bond film in France.

I found out on Christmas Eve. That was a great present,' she recalls. I was sitting with my friends in Paris and I was like, "Are you kidding me, it's not true!"' And Daniel Craig? I think that in his everyday life he's quite normal, not some crazy f***ed-up person. He's clean, smart, down-to-earth. He lives a normal life. He's not some crazy guy who invented a story for himself because he can't cope with reality.'

After Quantum of Solace she made Centurion, which wrapped in March and is set to be one of the biggest Graeco-Roman blockbusters since Gladiator. It stars the ubiquitous Dominic West and Michael Fassbender and is out next February.

Then she went to LA for two months.

"I just wanted to hang out. I took a scriptwriting class at UCLA and a philosophy class at The Art Institute in Santa Monica, and Spanish classes.

"And went on auditions and met wonderful directors and producers."

Last week she shot the last of her scenes for There Be Dragons by the director Roland Joffé, the Oscar-nominated director of The Mission and The Killing Fields, in which she plays a Hungarian resistance agent during the Spanish Civil War.

She can't imagine going back to the Ukraine today, although she still loves the national dishes: cabbage cooked with onion, pears and tomato sauce, and borsch.

When the Communist regime ended, when she was ten, things got harder, she says, and her family became even poorer.

It was Paris that changed her life. After our interview, she is off to look at flats in Notting Hill with prices just south of £1 million (she has just moved here after 12 years across the Channel).

Her favourite restaurants are Nobu and The Wolseley, and she says she wants to buy a place near Portobello Market because she loves the fruit and vegetable stalls. It's beautiful, full of energy; there are so many things to do, so much theatre,' she exclaims of London. I just saw Hamlet with Jude Law.'

I ask what she looks for in a man. Intelligence. Kindness. Open-minded-ness,' she says. Why would I go for bad?' Does being a Bond girl give her extra cachet? Well, that's what they think,' she exclaims. But I'm not a Bond girl. I did it last year for a film, but I'm totally different. I'm only like her in terms of persistence.

"I believe in good energy – if you send out good energy, you must get it back. But I don't think it should be all about me. I think the meaning should be other people. I'm trying to raise money for the hospital in my town in Ukraine."

And being rich? Is that nice? She nods. But I laugh at some questions people ask me, like, "What is the one item in your wardrobe that you can't live without?" ' – she puts out her hands – I'm like, "I can't live without water and food. I can live without shoes."