Olga Kurylenko 'thought she would die' during 'Quantum of Solace' speedboat stunt
Olga Kurylenko has described how she thought she was going to die during a stunt on Bond movie Quantum of Solace.
She played Bolivian agent Camille Montes in the 2008 movie, Daniel Craig's second outing as Bond, directed by Marc Foster.
The sequence in question was the boat chase, in which Bond rams his dinghy into a yacht, foiling an assassination attempt by Montes, before fighting with her while speeding away from a phalanx of machine gun-toting hired goons.
Read more: The troubled timeline of No Time To Die
Other boats batter into Bond's throughout.
Speaking to Cinemablend, she said: “I remember thinking, ‘Ok, this is the day of my death. I’m going to die today.’ It was so intense, because the thing is, it was real. You would think, ‘Oh this is some sort of computer graphic.’ But no, we were in that boat, and we had that other boat charging straight at us. We were basically going towards each other in super super high speed. Just flying through the water.”
She goes on to say that she realised that the situation was serious when the stunt coordinator began speaking to her gravely in the lead up to the sequence.
“I remember when the stunt coordinator came to me, looked me in the eye, and said, ‘Olga, we’re very serious. Hold on, ok? No matter what, just hold on for your life, because the shock is going to be very strong, and you might get thrown into the water. So no matter what you do, you just hold on tightly, ok. Look at me, this is very important,’” she added.
“And I just thought, ‘Oh my god, this is real.’ Because that boat hit us, for real. It wasn’t a mocap, it’s the real thing. I was like, ‘Wow, these guys are not kidding.’”
Read more: Who should play James Bond next?
Despite the terror, she adds that she has 'good memories' of the shoot, though 'there was a real sense of danger, we not pretending we’re scared, and it’s dangerous. We were scared for real'.
Which all adds to the realism, one supposes.
Kurylenko is next up in the thriller The Room, while the next Bond movie, No Time To Die – Daniel Craig's last turn as Bond – is due out in the UK on 12 November.