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An unforgettable experience happened on December 15, 1996 when I won the Supermodel contest while still in school. I was just seventeen years old then. Winning that competition was the turning point of my life. That's how I got into modeling and later started acting.

I never thought of a career of as a model, and it was a total surprise for me when I won the contest and became Miss Chelyabinsk. Then I started modelling in Paris.

There are loads of actresses that modelled. They just weren't famous. There weren't a lot that were really known as models that became actresses, but there are hordes of them that did modelling before such as Anjelica Huston, Jessica Lange, Sharon Stone, Demi Moore and Geena Davis. There are loads of 'em.

I was lucky - the first eight productions I auditioned for, I got cast.

When I was a teenager, me and a couple of my friends entered a couple of modeling competitions just for fun, and one of those got me an agent in Sydney.

I have an incredible role model in my mom. She was a single mother raising two kids in New York.

Successful model? That's a myth. The year I modeled was the most painful year of my life. Editors would always talk to you in the third person as though you were merely a piece of merchandise.

There wasn't really one time in my life where I was like, 'I want to be a model!'

In the beginning, I didn't know if I was still a model, if I was an actress. I knew I wanted to be an actress, but it was so difficult to be believed.