Italian actress Caterina Murino almost missed out on the opportunity to play Solange, the beautiful but unhappy wife of Le Chiffre’s ruthless associate, Alex Dimitrios. She was filming in Argentina when the first casting session took place in Paris, but she got a second chance while filming in Rome where another audition was being held. “The day before my appointment I fell from a horse while rehearsing and ended up in the hospital with a back injury. I went to the casting session filled with painkillers. I could hardly walk! And then they asked me if I could ride, and I had to answer that I had just fallen off a horse!”
Despite the rocky start, Murino soon received the call at home in Sardinia offering her the role of Solange. “I was filming that day, dressed as a male soldier, with a false beard and a baby – the opposite of a Bond girl! Everyone was asking me, ‘Are you sure the call was for you?’”
Although CASINO ROYALE marks Murino’s first film role in English, languages come naturally to the 29-year-old actress. “I learned French in four months to play Jean Reno’s sister in a French film, and I also filmed in Spanish in Argentina. But while I’ve worked in English on a television drama, I had to practice my English, and my horseback riding, for a couple of months.”
Murino describes Solange as a very modern woman with poor taste in men. “My husband is Dimitrios, Le Chiffre’s right-hand man. He is strong and rich and bad, a powerful combination, which attracts women. When she meets Bond, her husband has just been very rude to her in front of the whole casino. She decides to have some fun and get back at him, so she goes off with Bond. She doesn’t know who he is. He’s just a sexy guy who invites her for a drink. She has great sex, and then he’s gone. But she pays a high price for her fun.”
Describing Bond’s near-universal appeal to women, Murino says, “We always fall in love with the impossible man, the man you have for one night who never comes back. James is tough, dangerous and smart. He travels the world, but he never gives his heart, only his body. You shouldn’t fall in love with him. With Bond and Solange the energy is purely sexual. It’s chemistry.”
“Normally I don’t find sex scenes very comfortable,” the actress adds. “But Daniel and Martin Campbell made it very easy, and I felt very calm. Martin has a lot of energy and a lot of authority. You can see that he likes to make action movies, but he’s also great with intimate scenes.”
Murino says she was also thrilled to be working with Judi Dench, although under unusual circumstances. “I had only one scene with Judi, and by that time I was dead. Can I still say I acted with Judi Dench, even though I was only acting dead?”
Portraying Le Chiffre’s deadly female sidekick, Valenka, is Bosnian-born American Ivana Milicevic, whose numerous television and film credits include HBO’s “Mind of the Married Man,” Just Like Heaven and Love, Actually.
“I watched 007 when I was a kid, and I remember being terrified of Jaws in The Spy Who Loved Me,” says Milicevic. “Suddenly to be an adult and cast as a villain in a Bond film is fantastic.”
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