Olga Kurylenko was generous with first pay cheques

OHMYGOSSIP — Olga Kurylenko took great pleasure in buying her family a variety of gifts when she first started getting paid as a model and she can remember the happiness she and her mother felt.

Olga Kurylenko treated her family to a variety of gifts when she started working. The screen beauty and was raised solely by her mother Marina Alyabusheva after her father Konstantin walked out on them when Olga was just three and she began her career as a model when she was just 15.

Olga remembers vividly some of the first purchases she made when she started to earn cash – such as a VHS player and three video tapes and a mini hi-fi – and the happiness it brought to her mum and grandmother Raisa because they had previously had so little.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph newspaper, she said: “I felt so happy, I was so proud of myself. Because my mother could never get these things and I got them, and I was 15. And my mother was so excited, she thought it was wonderful. I had brought some excitement and happiness to my family.”

Olga lived with her mother and grandmother in a four-room flat in Berdyansk, Ukraine, and she can remember very hard times when the Soviet Union fell and there was a shortage of groceries and essential items.

Although the 33-year-old actress has starred as a Bond girl and can be seen opposite Tom Cruise in ‘Oblivion’, Olga never dreamed she could conquer Hollywood as a child.

When asked if she imagined becoming an actress or a model, she said: “No. And you know why? Because I knew I couldn’t. You don’t dream about things that are impossible; that are out of your range. So I couldn’t dream. For me, that was never going to happen.”