LOS ANGELES, California—As we continue our feature on Daniel Craig, here’s what the new Bond girl, Olga Kurylenko, told us about her costar in “Quantum of Solace”: “Definitely, his eyes are quite powerful. They’re among the things that make him very charming.”

Unfortunately, Olga—a stunner from Ukraine who went on to model and act in Paris—apparently hasn’t had much luck finding charming men in real life. Responding to a question about dating and romance, Olga gave an interesting reply: “I am not a person who has had a lot of romance in my life. I’m not interested in it. If it happens, it happens. It’s hard for me to like somebody. I’d rather be alone. Most of my life, I’ve been alone. It’s not like, if people want me, then I’d want them, too. I don’t want anybody!” Olga went through two marriages, which both ended in divorce.

The actress plays a feisty ally to Bond, who’s on a mission to seek answers for the death of his beloved Vesper Lynd (Eva Green in “Casino Royale”). She reveled in the fact that her character, Camille, is the only Bond girl who doesn’t get in the sack with the secret agent. She declared, “I’m very proud about that. I think he’s done enough of that, because he’s slept with a lot of women before. The fact that he loses a woman he truly loved makes him unavailable for this kind of thing in the movie.

Her own story

“‘Quantum’ starts one hour after the story of ‘Casino’ ends. He’s devastated because he lost Vesper. I don’t think he’s ready for a new love story. There’s none of that in his head, and my character is not concentrated on that, either. She has her own story. She’s motivated by something she’s been wanting to get done for years. When she meets him, romance is the last thing she’s thinking about!”

Olga, who was 3 when her parents split, recounted her childhood in Ukraine: “I grew up with my mother and grandmother. In the beginning, there was my grandfather, too, but he died when I was 9. After that, the two women raised me. I got so much love from them. I never missed my father at all. I don’t regret it.”

She didn’t see her father again until she was in her early teens. “I met him, but you can’t miss someone you don’t know,” she shared. “My mother never made a big deal about it because she was the one who left my father. It was her choice, and I respect it. It’s better to have one parent and get a lot of love than have two and get none.”

Her participation in “Quantum,” which is directed by Marc Forster, is Olga’s biggest break. She got to test Daniel’s coolness as she drove him around in some of the film’s exciting car-chase scenes. “In the movie, I had to drive like a maniac because we were escaping from the bad guys,” Olga recalled. “I had some training with the stunt team. They checked if I could drive, and if I could drive really fast. We had some obstacles. They taught me how to spin the car.

“In the scenes, I had to take abrupt turns or make a turn between two buildings that were very close to each other. I had to make sure the car did not hit the buildings. I had to do many takes. Daniel was very brave, because he was sitting right next to me. I was thinking, ‘He must be having a heart attack.’ He must have been thinking, she’s not going to make it—but he kept his cool. He was the real Bond!”

Vertical wind tunnel

In Daniel’s case, of the many difficult stunts he had to do, he singled out a scene where he and Olga had to simulate a free fall from an aircraft. The actor, whom we interviewed separately, shared: “We had discussions about how we wanted to shoot it, because none of us could say that we’ve seen a good sequence of a free fall from a plane in any movie. We went to this place that stunt coordinator, Gary Powell, knew. He had this idea to shoot in this vertical wind tunnel where there’s a 200-mile-an-hour wind going upwards. You can actually simulate free falling. It was incredibly difficult, because Olga and I had to learn how to go into the tunnel with a camera and 20 other digital cameras around. It was potentially very dangerous!”

As for his driving skills, which are put to a grueling test in the opening chase scene where he powers an Aston Martin DBS (Bond’s preferred car model, which makes a comeback here), Daniel joked: “I can drive well in a straight line. I’m sometimes good at going around corners.” He added, “Aston Martin gave me access to their cars before we started shooting. I took them out to test tracks. I spun them and did all sorts of things. Whether it has improved my driving, I can’t honestly say, but I had a lot of fun doing it!”

Told that one of his predecessors likes to point out that the Bond part is a difficult, arduous role to play, and that, however high the pay is, it’s never enough, Daniel agreed, his blue eyes smiling. “He’s right,” Daniel readily blurted out. “It’s a very tough job. But, it’s a very nice job to do. I get a lot of joy out of it. It’s incredibly hard work. I’m working with about a thousand people to make the movie, and we’re all working incredibly hard. I’m just at the front end. I’m the guy out front. That’s all.”

Challenge

For Daniel, part of the challenge of being Bond is that he has to stay buff. “I go to the gym five times a week,” he said with quiet resignation. “Forty minutes at a time. I try to keep it to a minimum because I hate it.”

He confessed that there are times when he does not feel like reporting to the set. “I’m like all of us,” he admitted. “It’s 5:30 in the morning, and it’s freezing cold outside. I’m a bit sore.” But, Daniel is known to be very disciplined. He recited his daily routine when he is shooting a Bond movie, which usually takes six months: “In the morning, I get up, I have breakfast at work, and I talk to Marc. We do the day’s work. I come home from work. I go to the gym. Then, I do about 40 minutes of fight training. I eat, then go to bed. If I can fit in a massage, that’s great.” What if he’s really exhausted? “I fall into bed,” he answered, laughing.

Following a self-imposed, highly disciplined routine during filming makes Daniel go for broke when the shoot is done. He revealed, “The first thing that concerned me after finishing this movie was going on a holiday, to eat and drink what I wanted to, for 24 hours a day for at least two weeks. That’s the reason I went to Italy on a holiday, drank, ate pasta and read books. I caught up on movies and other things that I hadn’t been doing for the past six months.”

One quibble is that, unlike “Casino,” which featured a memorable steamy scene with Caterina Murino, there’s no such sizzling moment in “Quantum.” Daniel came up with a reason: “Bond just had his heart broken. To jump in with 10 women after that seemed wrong. It would have contradicted the storyline. It doesn’t mean he now can’t. We’ll see what happens in the next movie.”

On the impact fame has had on Daniel’s life, he sounded resigned to the fact that people take pictures of him even while he’s in the lavatory. “It comes as part of the territory,” he declared. “The difference today is that everybody has a camera. That makes a huge difference on people’s privacy. It’s very difficult to say, ‘You can’t take my picture’ because it’s already done, so I just try and keep myself as private as I possibly can. I keep out of the limelight as much as possible.”

Teenage daughter

When he does appear on the red carpet, it’s usually with his girlfriend, American movie producer, Satsuki Mitchell. The paparazzi even hound Ella Craig, his teenage daughter with ex-wife, actress Fiona Loudon.

With all the traveling he does to shoot in various locations and promote the Bond movie all over the globe, he virtually lives out of a suitcase. “I can feel stable in life, and I stay in beautiful hotels,” he rationalized. “It’s a privilege and it’s nice. There are benefits to this job, and you have to take advantage of them. The Sistine Chapel was made available to us in the morning, before everybody got in there. So, we had a private viewing. Why would you not take advantage of that?” Still, he stressed, “I try and get home as much as possible.”

Daniel, who was a respected character actor when he was offered the Bond role, claimed that he has not regretted taking on the high-profile part. “No, it has never happened,” he replied to a question if he’s had moments of regret. “There are other things that concern me more at the moment.”

Daniel, who next stars in Edward Zwick’s World War II drama, “Defiance,” clarified that he never said that he won’t do a third or fourth Bond movie. “I never said that,” he declared. “I’m just quite superstitious—I don’t take anything for granted. That’s all. And economically, the world is in quite a lot of trouble at the moment, so who knows if we can afford to do another Bond movie anytime soon? But, I’d love to do a third one!”

E-mail rvnepales_5585@yahoo.com, and read his blog, “The Nepales Report,” on http://blogs.inquirer.net/nepalesreport.