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To the list of transatlantic exports from the isle of Sardinia—silver, wine, and aromatic cheese—comes the actress Caterina Murino. Making her Hollywood debut as Solange, the wife of a Bond villain in Casino Royale, the 29-year-old gallops into a scene for which action film was invented: in a green bikini atop a white horse on a tropical beach. Bareback.

It almost didn't happen: On the set of an Italian period drama the day before her 007 audition, Murino was violently thrown from a steed. "I read the script of James Bond, and in 120 pages, there's only one facking horse—mine!" she says over drinks at New York's Four Seasons Hotel, in an accent that could make even a reading of the Old Testament sound titillating. Leaping to her feet in a black dress with a red shawl—which barely obscures her abbondanza—she models her injuries ("I broke a rib heeere"), and it becomes clear that this Bond bedmate is more seducer than seducee.

"I love to be like a boy, to speak about bad things like boys do," Murino confides, teasing an earring with her index finger. "Like sex, very dirty things. Sex turns the world. I love to be part of and understand this universe, this male universe." Casino Royale—with Daniel Craig's darker, visceral version of MI6's alpha assassin—sits squarely within this orbit.

"You will never see a James Bond so deep in his role," says Murino. "When he kills somebody, he looks like a real killer. You will see, for the first time, blood on his face."

Amid all the macabre, Murino projects a sunny, seaside manner, born of the white sand and tonic surf of Cagliari, on the southern shore of what she calls la isola felice, the happy island. The daughter of a boar hunter and a housewife, Caterina dreamed of becoming a doctor, but after failing her med-school boards, she traded her textbooks for headshots. At eighteen she placed fourth in Miss Italy—a contest that makes Miss America look like a reality-show open casting call in Topeka—moved to Milan, catwalked, acted on stage, and vamped it up in such European films as the 2004 Jean Reno comedy, L'Enquête Corse. But even if Casino Royale lands her on Scorsese's speed dial, she'll never move to Beverly Hills: She's happier in Paris with her boyfriend of three years, French cameraman Cyrill Renaud. And in the coming two years, she's starring in six movies (three Italian, three French), a breeze for someone fluent in four languages.

By now the group of businessmen sitting at the next table—apparently abandoning any hope of carrying on a conversation—have repositioned themselves to stare. With barely a glance in their direction, Murino leans forward conspiratorially.

"If I'm going to start a story with a guy," she says (translation: a relationship), "I'd love to start in a platonic way, just with the mind. You start to know his life, but not in bed. And maybe after one month or two months, if you can have the sex, I think it's the best way to start the story." Her lips slowly spread into a wicked and unknowable smile. "It's very sicky, a very sick game. It's torture, you know?"

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