The Herald�s Friends of Maggie�s campaign has been chosen to host the Scottish charity gala screening of the new James Bond film, Quantum of Solace. To celebrate, we interview the film�s glamorous Bond girls and explain how you can be there on the big night

Bond girl Camille Played by Olga Kurylenko

As a young girl, Olga Kurylenko could never have dreamed of growing up and playing a Bond girl - because she grew up in a world where the Bond films did not exist. Imagine it. No Sean Connery. No Roger Moore. No Q. No Bond girls.

Sitting on the set of the latest film, Quantum of Solace, the 29-year-old smiles at the irony, having just won out over thousands of other actresses to win the role of Camille opposite Daniel Craig. Kurylenko was born in Berdyansk, an isolated town in southwest Ukraine, at a time when the Bond series was banned by the Communist government as a threat to Soviet culture. Even if they had been shown, though, her family were simply too poor to afford a trip to the cinema.

"We didn't have anything," says Kurylenko. "It was such a different life from how kids grew up in Europe and America." However, Kurylenko credits that difficult existence as fuelling her need to succeed. "I still have that survival instinct. It's great now that I can support my family and my mother."

The change of fortune that eventually led to the Bond film set came after a 26-hour train ride to Moscow for her first holiday when she was 15 years old. It was there that a talent agent spotted her and offered her a modelling job. "It was crazy, because I then started travelling constantly back and forth between my town and Moscow for all these modelling jobs," she says. "I missed a lot of school." Within a year, a French agency scouting Moscow's newest faces offered Olga a major contract and the opportunity to move to Paris. The only problem was sneaking out of her homeland. "It was so insane trying to get out of the country. I was so nervous going through passport control and was sure something was going to happen to me. When I finally made it through, I was completely shocked and yet so relieved I was able to get out."

Within six months of arriving in Paris, Kurylenko had not only learned French, but was soon on the covers of Elle, Glamour, Marie Claire and Vogue, as well as becoming the face of Lejaby lingerie, Bebe clothing, Clarins and Helena Rubinstein cosmetics. All the while, she was studying acting. Unlike most of her model-turned-actress contemporaries, she succeeded, eventually winning substantial parts in such French language films as L'Annulaire, The Serpent, and most recently Hitman, one of her first English-speaking roles.

The news of the Bond role came last Christmas Eve. "When my agent called, we were eating Christmas dinner and I just let out this enormous scream. I couldn't believe it."

Kurylenko was needed in London almost immediately to begin working with a dialect coach to learn how to speak Spanish with a Bolivian accent. And if that wasn't enough, she also needed to undergo intensive kickboxing, weapons, skydiving, and stunt training. "They kept pushing and pushing and pushing me, but I'm so glad because I was able to do all the fight scenes myself without a stunt double."

To prove her point, Kurylenko rolls up her sleeve and shows me some of her bruises, wearing them as a badge of honour. "The fact that I overcame my fears - especially of skydiving - makes me more proud of what I've been doing for the last six months," she says. "I like to try things that seem impossible. I don't want things in life to be easy - then what am I going to achieve? What am I going to overcome?"

Bond girl Agent Fields Played by Gemma Arterton

Step by step, Gemma Arterton has quietly pushed her way to the front of film and television with a series of leading roles, including Tess in the recent BBC dramatisation and the ITV comedy-drama Lost in Austen. And now, of course, Bond.

Arterton, who is 22, won the role of the MI6 operative Agent Fields six months after graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. "Gemma is incredibly talented and extremely witty," says director Marc Forster, who chose Arterton from around 7000 actresses.

The daughter of a welder and a cleaner from Kent, Arterton supported herself through drama school by working at a Covent Garden beauty shop. Last year, she completed roles in St Trinian's and Capturing Mary for the BBC, and Guy Ritchie's RocknRolla, but it was while on stage at London's Globe Theatre playing Rosaline in Love's Labour's Lost that she caught the eye of the Bond casting directors. "I still don't know why they chose me," she says. "I don't have huge boobs and I'm not really a hot girl'. Olga (Kurylenko) is such a hotty totty ... I'm more like a Miss Moneypenny!"

In contrast to Kurylenko's more contemporary Bond Girl, Arterton says Agent Fields (whose first name, revealed in the film, is a classic 007 double-entendre) is a deliberate homage to the 1960s. "She's very old school, kind of funny, with some very cheeky lines." Aterton cites Honor Blackman (Pussy Galore in Goldfinger) and Diana Rigg (Countess Teresa in On Her Majesty's Secret Service) as influences. "I love those old British Bond Girls, the ones who were a bit snooty, but were really quite a bit naughty inside."

The making of Quantum has been exciting; she remembers her love scene with Daniel Craig. "Can you believe it happened my first day on set? I was so nervous. We had to do take after take after take, and each time I was, Goodness me, I can't believe this is happening'." Arterton thinks it was the right decision to get one of the toughest scenes out of the way quickly. "Doing that scene before Daniel and I got to know each other was probably best; otherwise it would've felt weird - like I was kissing my brother or something."

Her next project after Solace is the romantic lead opposite Jake Gyllenhaal in Prince of Persia. Despite these high-profile film roles though, Arterton is determined to remain anonymous. "I change my look completely and I think that's a really good way of keeping your privacy."

• Interviews by David Giammarco

Three of the best

Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress) in Dr No
The first on-screen Bond girl, Honey Ryder is perhaps best remembered for the iconic scene in which she emerges from the sea in a white bikini.

Sylvia Trench (Eunice Grayson) in Dr No and From Russia With Love
Sylvia Trench is the woman responsible for Bond's most famous catchphrase. When asked her name, she says "Trench, Sylvia Trench" allowing Bond the opportunity to mimic her when asked his own name and reply "Bond, James Bond".

Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton) in Goldfinger
Famous for her gilded death, Jill Masterson is killed by Goldfinger after he discovers she has slept with James Bond.