Anya Monzikova began her career the way Andie McDowell, Cameron Diaz and Rene Russo did – by modeling.
The gig padded her banking account and got her comfortable on a modeling set – not unlike the film versions she’d soon occupy.
Modeling opened some doors for Monzikova, but it also kept others locked shut.
She recalls auditioning for a casting director who had little interest in watching her perform.
After the audition, the woman turned to her and said, “I have to apologize. I wouldn’t see you for months. I saw that you modeled and I thought you couldn’t act,” Monzikova recalls.
“Thanks. I think,” she says.
Her looks certainly helped secure a spot on “Deal or No Deal,” the popular game show hosted by Howie Mandel. The gig made her recognizable on the street and showed her she’d rather act than be a television personality.
Her work in last year’s science fiction film “Surrogates” and the upcoming “Iron Man 2” are helping her make that transition.
Her back story – born in Russia, struggling to carve out a movie career – is also an appropriate background for her new TV project.
She plays one of two Russian born film students trying to break into the movie industry in a “kooky and hilarious“ pilot now shooting.
“There’s a lot of pressure and disappointment,” she says of a young actress‘ life, one in which a person flunks a hundred auditions before hearing a single “yes.”
Yet the rewards, however modest, make it worthwhile.
“I have these little epiphanies – Yay, I feel like I’m in the right place at the right time,” she says.
(Photo: Anya Monzikova is parlaying her beauty and grit into an acting career.)
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Well she is a very pretty girl…and looks exactly like every other blonde ingenue in Hollywood. Sheesh, can’t they find talented women who don’t look like they were cloned in a eugenics lab?
No kidding, Dawn. She looks like Charlize Theron’s little sister.