Izabella Scorupco

She moved to Stockholm in 1978 where she enrolled in drama and music classes which were about as necessary to her career as ketchup would be on Porterhouse steak for purposes of making it edible. At 17, Izabella landed her first movie role in Ingen Kan Alska Som Vi, which is Swedish for "Look at me, I just made 27-million dollars and I don't even have a speaking part."

After school, while occasionally modeling in Sweden and abroad, Izabella decided to embark on a singing career. I mean, why not? In 1989, her first album, Iza went gold although she only sang three notes during the entire course of the record. The music was rumored to have been inspired by seventies groups such as ABBA and American magazines such as Playboy, Penthouse and the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.

Izabella Scorupco

In 1994, Izabella decided to resume her acting career. Five minutes later, she landed the leading part in the medieval drama Petri Tårar, at a rate of one million dollars per second. One year later, Izabella made her Hollywood debut in Martin Campbell's GoldenEye, as new Bond girl Natalya Siminova, a Russian computer specialist who manages to program complex super computers, although her IQ is only 75. She received rave reviews. Among the parade of positive reactions to Scorupco's acting abilities were comments such as "what a figure," "what a pair of melons," and "va va va vooom."

In Scorupco's most recent movie Vertical Limit, she plays a Canadian mountaineer. During most of the film's shooting, actors had to hang 1,200 feet above the ground. Not surprisingly, Izabella says she will probably never do it again. Lawyers and insurance companies almost went wild upon hearing of these stunts. In addition, it messed up her hair big time.

April 2001