Caterina Murino talks about her rise to fame

Not so long ago Caterina Murino was penniless and living on yogurt. So how did she come to star in Casino Royale as perhaps the most bewitching Bond girl ever? As John Preston discovers for The Telegraph, there's more to it than her exquisite good looks.

Early on in my conversation with Caterina Murino my eye is caught by what appears to be a small cauldron on the dressing-table of her hotel room.

Every so often it gives out a loud plop and a cloud of greenish gas rises into the air. When I ask what it is, she twists round - quite a complicated manoeuvre involving uncrossing her very long, very brown legs - and starts to laugh.

'It's for my skin,' she explains. 'If I don't have it turned on, everything goes,' she lowers her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, 'terribly dry.'

It is possible, I suppose, that without her mobile cauldron, Caterina Murino's skin would shrivel up like old toad hide, but somehow I doubt it. Bond girls don't really have physical flaws and even by these exalted standards, Murino is unusually beautiful.

In Casino Royale she understandably catches Daniel Craig's eye as she rides along a Jamaican beach on a large white horse, and even on a grey autumn day in London with periodic plopping noises in the background she is no less striking.

A former model, who once came fifth in the Miss Italy beauty pageant - you wonder what the first four must have been like - Murino got the part of Solange in Casino Royale despite missing the original audition and not being entirely fluent in English.

'I was in Buenos Aires doing a movie and when I came back my agent said, "Congratulations, you just missed the James Bond casting." I can't say I was very bothered. I said to her, "Do you really imagine they are going to take someone like me? Hah! I don't think so."'

She then moved to Rome to start work on another film, only to find that by a lucky coincidence the Casino Royale casting director had also gone there, still searching for that elusive Bond beauty.

Finally, she did her audition, was called back to do another one and two weeks later learnt, to her astonishment, that she had got the part. 'I was so surprised, you could have knocked me down with a brush.'

'With a feather?' 'Exactly!'

Caterina Murino may have just starred in a Bond film and, as her press release says, be on the brink of international stardom, but she still retains some engagingly unstarry mannerisms.

She insists on pouring me coffee - 'I will be mother' - and apologises profusely whenever her mobile phone rings.

Having secured the part in Casino Royale, she spent the next few weeks getting increasingly anxious about it.

'What worried me most of all was that I would have to ride a horse in the film. You see, only two months before, I had been thrown from a galloping horse and broken a bone in my back. Afterwards, I swore to myself that I would never go anywhere near a horse again. Not even to stroke his nose! Then I read the script and almost the first words I read were, "Solange is riding a horse along the beach." I just thought, "Oh no, I can't possibly do this."'

Murino told Barbara Broccoli, the film's producer, about her problem and Broccoli arranged for her to meet 'the best horse-person in London' to see if he could help.

'I spent a whole month with him. Every morning I would be in tears and every night I would have nightmares about having another accident the next day. Then, after about three weeks, I found I wasn't frightened any more, and after a month I loved horses so much that I'd run after one if I saw it in the park.'

But it wasn't only the horse-riding that made her nervous. Murino was almost as frightened of playing opposite Daniel Craig as she was of leaping into the saddle.

'I was very afraid about this. Especially of making a fool of myself with such a great actor.' Her face darkens. 'Oh yes, I was very, very afraid.'

'But Daniel Craig was probably nervous too,' I suggest.

Again she gives a high-pitched, slightly hysterical-sounding laugh. 'Hah! I don't think he can have been nervous about appearing with me. That wouldn't make sense. But it's true that the stakes are very high this time, and for Daniel more than anyone else.'

Two days before our meeting and in conditions of great secrecy I had been shown 11 minutes of edited footage from Casino Royale - this after being asked to surrender my mobile phone.

What was immediately apparent even from this snippet is that Daniel Craig's Bond is very different from the smoothie joker of old.

His Bond is much more human for a start, both in his relationships and in the way he treats his enemies.

In one scene, he beats one man's head to a pulp against a washbasin - something Roger Moore would never have dreamt of doing, for fear of getting blood on his loafers.

When I tell Murino this, her face lights up again. 'I am so pleased that you are arriving at this point,' she says.

'And I am going to tell you why. Casino Royale is the first book Ian Fleming wrote and it describes how James Bond became James Bond. Here, we were determined to make him a flesh-and-blood creature. When Daniel kills someone you really feel it. Also, when he makes love he is very, very rough. Just like a normal human being,' she adds significantly.

And it's not just Bond who has changed. Instead of being the usual identikit bimbos, his new lady-friends hark back to earlier, more distinctive models such as Honey Ryder and Pussy Galore.

'We are not typical James Bond girls. We are proper women, you know; we have feelings and characters. And although I am very happy with this label "James Bond girl", I hope that people will see that I am also passionate about what I do.'

Murino is hardly the first Bond girl to insist that she wants to be taken seriously, but on paper at least she stands a better chance than most.

Casino Royale is the 29-year-old's 15th film and - as she's keen to point out - she also spent three years doing theatre in Italy.

'I was in Shakespeare, Pirandello and Agatha Christie.' When I express some surprise that there's an audience for Agatha Christie plays in Italy, she says proudly, 'Oh yes, I was Vera Claythorne in Ten Little Indians in Milan. It was a huge success. I was murdered in the end, but only after I had been on stage for almost three hours.'

Born and brought up in Sardinia, Murino originally hoped to become a doctor. But after failing to get into medical school, she abruptly switched tack and started entering beauty competitions. 'It was just a joke, really. I never expected to win anything.'

'So you weren't disappointed when you only came fifth in Miss Italy?' 'Disappointed? No, I was delighted! I thought I'd done really well - especially after I was asked to model cosmetics.'

She spent the next few months modelling, but grew increasingly fed up with it and came to England for a break.

'It was here that I discovered theatre,' she says. 'I didn't have any money, but I would just eat yogurt in order to get some money for tickets.'

As she sat in the upper circle night after night, spooning yogurt into her mouth and peering enraptured at the stage below, a strange thought lodged itself in her mind: maybe she too could become an actress.

'Back in Rome I did some acting lessons and I realised I loved it more than anything else I had ever done before.'

After she graduated from drama school, the work was not slow in coming, even if it wasn't always of the highest quality. 'In my first movie I was completely naked, full of blood.'

'Covered in blood?' 'Covered, yes. I found it difficult as I am religious, a devout Roman Catholic, but I just tried to concentrate on the part.'

And that, more or less, is what she has been doing ever since, although she spent two years living with a boyfriend in Beirut (she is currently dating a French cameraman, Cyrill Renaud).

'Basically, I have been working as much as possible and trying to get better at what I do. To begin with, I always felt very exposed on screen, but I think I've got less…' she clicks her fingers in frustration, 'less self-conscious. But whenever I see myself in a movie I'm always thinking I am terrible. I am a very critical person, you see. In fact, maybe I can become a film critic if it doesn't work out for me as an actress.'

If Caterina Murino isn't to become one of the numerous Bond girls who have slipped back into obscurity, a lot depends on what she does next.

Already Hollywood agents are circling and Murino is about to make her first-ever trip to Los Angeles. But there seems little likelihood that all this attention is going to divert her from her chosen path.

'Although I am very happy to go to California and talk to agents, Hollywood is just a dream for me.

I like where I live at the moment - Paris - and I'm not planning to move anywhere. I've had far too many friends who went to Hollywood hoping to become movie stars and after six months they're all working as waitresses.'

That's one of the reasons why she's already signed up for her next project - an Italian film in which she will play a woman in 1940s Sicily who tries to become a priest and ends up fighting a lone battle against the Vatican.

'Maybe it's not so commercial, but I read the script and just fell in love with it. Because of my religious beliefs, you see. What I really want to do more than anything else is interesting work. Of course, all actors and actresses want to be popular, but when I come home every day, I want to be able to look in the mirror and feel that I have done something worthwhile.'

Indeed, anyone hoping to sign Caterina Murino up in the next 18 months is likely to find it tough going. She's supposed to be making six films next year - three in Italian and three in French.

'I don't know if it will be possible to fit them in, but I want to try my best. After all, we are only here once, aren't we? And then you know what I want to do?' As I shake my head, the machine in the corner gives out another loud plop. She leans forward and rests her elbows on her knees. 'This is my plan: I am going to go home, lock the door, throw my mobile phone out of the window and concentrate on living for a change.'

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