Izabella Scorupco Biography

Birth Name : Izabella Dorota Skorupko

Date of Birth : 4 June 1970, Bialystok, Podlaskie, Poland

Nickname : Iza

Height : 5' 9" (1.75 m)

Profession : Actress and singer

Izabella Dorota Scorupco was born on June 4th, 1970 in Bialystok, Poland, a northeastern town near the Russian border. When she was a young child, her mother, a doctor, and father, a musician, divorced, and 8-year-old Izabella moved with the former to Stockholm, Sweden. There, she took music and acting classes, and at age 17, she was discovered by director Staffan Hildebrand. After her 1988 film debut in his Only We Can Love Like This, Izabella was off to a great start.

Izabella Scorupco's spotlight career began in 1988 with a role in the Polish film, Only We Can Love Like This. This led to a brief but very successful modeling career, the pinnacle of which was an Italian Vogue cover appearance. In 1989, she took on the music charts, releasing the gold single "Substitute," and disco-themed gold album Iza. She even followed up her pop star success with the release of another single in 1991, called "Shame, Shame, Shame."

Scorupco then launched her career as a photographic model and became successful in Sweden and the rest of Europe. During her modeling career, she appeared in television series and films, making use of her fluency in four languages. She also began her singing career. After releasing her first single, 'Substitute', she released the album IZA which went gold.

Returning to film work in the mid 90's, Scorupco immediately won the lead role in the Swedish film Petri Tears (1995), followed by her Hollywood debut in the James Bond film, Goldeneye (1995) playing the Russian computer expert Natalya Simonova.

Though she had garnered worldwide exposure from the film, she returned home for her next few film projects and didn't return to Hollywood until she landed major roles in the action films, Vertical Limit (2000) and Reign of Fire (2002).