All In The Eyes

After a breakthrough year, expect to see model and up-and-coming actress Lana Zakocela’s transfixing gaze everywhere

- Sarah Horne Grose

A megayacht in the Mediterranean is a long way from the small town in Latvia where Lana Zakocela was born. But that’s just where the 5'8'' beauty found herself last spring, shooting the campaign for Antonio Banderas Fragrances’ perfume Queen of Seduction.

Zakocela, who arrived in England by bus when she was just 16, has been working in Europe, the U.S., and beyond ever since, modeling for the likes of Australian Cosmopolitan, revealing her impossibly toned physique in moody editorials for French magazines including Madame Figaro, and now, dodging sea snakes in St. Barts for her sultry cover with Maxim.

But something clicked when she stepped in front of the camera with Banderas for the video and print campaign.

“Antonio and I worked together for four days,” she says. “At the time, I had a boyfriend, and he didn’t want me to be an actress because they have quite crazy lives. But Antonio said, ‘You have to do this. It doesn’t matter about your accent.’ ”

So these days, the brunette is pursuing her dream, and stays up late in her Battery Park apartment reading Shakespeare for her classes at New York’s Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute. She knows, of course, that the path from model to actress has been heavily worn. “My teachers, they hate models,” she laughs. For now, she has fully committed to her studies there, only booking shoots in nearby locations like the Caribbean on two days of the workweek.