Just Who is Mel Gibson's New Lady

Few could blame her (Oksana Grigorieva) for dreaming of a life beyond the poverty and grime of Saransk, the industrial town in the heart of Russia (under Soviet rule for much of her youth) into which she was born.

Her parents, Pyotr and Lyudmila, were music teachers and, when it became clear that their daughter had inherited their gift, they did their best to encourage its development.

Schoolfriends recall Oksana as clever and hard-working, keen to hone her English and to one day experience life in the affluent West.

She was a straight-A student and, though gangly and pimply in her youth, she blossomed in her late teens.

She entered beauty and music competitions in a bid to broaden her horizons. She was, they say, impatient and determined.

Perhaps that impatience lay behind her decision to marry for the first time at 19, while a music student at the prestigious Kazan Conservatoire.

Her mother, it seems, was horrified. Little is known of Oksana’s first husband save that he shared her desire to live in the West – and was a drug addict.

...It was, one said, ‘a very dark time in her life. She had a lot of trouble with that man.’After six months, and much to her parents’ relief, Oksana ended the marriage. 

But her restless ambition was far from quenched. At the age of 20 she got just the break she was looking for – a ticket out of the USSR.

The chance came when she heard of an exchange organised by family friend Sergey Kuzmin, who ran a cultural centre in Saransk.

...She applied to travel to Britain to be placed in a voluntary role by the Community Service Volunteers Organisation.

One family friend who refused to be named says: ‘Oksana was afraid that she would not be able to stay in Britain after her visa ran out.

'She began looking for a man to marry because this would give her a chance to remain permanently in the West. She could not face the ignominy of going back home; of failing in her dream to be a success in the West.’

Conveniently, she met graphic designer Nicholas Rowland, a man happy to go down on one knee to this exotic beauty 19 years his junior.

On their marriage certificate she listed her job as ‘music teacher.

After five months of marriage, Oksana wrote to the Kazan Conservatoire on September 7, 1992, requesting that she be sent what documents she needed to enroll in the prestigious Royal College of Music, London.

Oksana’s new life had begun. As her studies at the Royal College of Music started, her marriage to Rowland seems to have ended.

A relationship with a much older man, well-connected and wealthy, seems to have followed, although he has never been named.

According to friends, it was he who introduced her to London society and into a circle that led to her being photographed by Lord Lichfield and appearing in a calendar of his work.

Her eyes were being opened to a new world of wealth and opportunity.

It was a world that would bring her into contact with 007 actor Timothy Dalton and, though the details of their meeting are not clear, the spark between them led to a relationship lasting ten years and to the birth of their son Alexander, now 12.

Classical pianist Oksana split from Dalton two years ago and the couple have since sold the home they shared in Chiswick, West London.

...Eighteen months on it seems she is more a symptom than a cause of Mel Gibson’s marriage disintegration.

Whether or not Gibson is her ‘happily ever after’ is unclear.

But one thing is certain. When she stepped into the limelight with Gibson she didn’t look like a woman troubled by her turbulent past or given to backward glances.

She has always had her sights firmly fixed on the future.

Last week, as she wrapped her fingers around Mel Gibson’s hand, that future had finally arrived.