She had no trouble living in France at the dawn of her career, because she spoke flawless French. She was also fluent in Italian, Russian and, of course, Czech, but knew not a word of English. That didn't stop her from learning. Nicolas remembers that she was a quick study. English came to her quickly when opportunities in the U.S. began to catch her fancy, he says.

But while she could deftly handle the language barriers, the barriers erected by her Czechoslovakian citizenship posed some challenges that made Nicolas' booking job a nightmare. The era was pre-Communist collapse. "Getting a visa for her to travel was ve ry difficult," he explains, "almost impossible." He had to tuck numerous cases of champagne into the British Consulate in Paris to grease the skids. That usually worked, but there were times, Nicolas says, when he wasn't sure it would.

Daniela soon came to realize that, for her, signing with an agency in the U.S. was preferable to staying in Paris, so she signed with Spectrum and moved to New York. After Spectrum folded, she signed with Next and then with Elite, her agency of record now .

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