Famke Janssen

Dutch actress Famke Janssen (1964) started her career as a model for Chanel. The model-turned-actress had her breakthrough as James Bond's enemy in GoldenEye (1995). She is best known as Jean Grey in the blockbusters X-Men (2000), X-Men 2 (2003), and X-Men: The Last Stand (Brett Rattner, 2006) and as Lenore Mills in the Taken film trilogy (2008–2014).


American postcard. Famke Jansen in X-Men - The Last Stand (2006).


Belgian postcard in the series De 50 mooiste vrouwen van de eeuw! by Pmagazine, no. 43. Photo: Andrew Eccles / Outline.

The definitive bad-ass Bond babe

Famke Beumer Janssen was born in 1964, in Amstelveen, the Netherlands, and has two other siblings, director-producer Antoinette Beumer and actress-writer Marjolein Beumer. Her two sisters are blonde and blue-eyed, while she is the only brunette. After her parents' divorce, she took her mother's name. After high school, Janssen studied economics for a short time at the University of Amsterdam, while earning extra money as a model.

Janssen began as a model working for Yves Saint Laurent and signed with Elite Model. She worked across Europe and emigrated to the United States in 1984. In New York, she modelled for Chanel and Victoria’s Secret. She took acting classes - initially as a hobby. Later, taking a break from modelling, she attended Columbia University. She majored in creative writing and literature and studied stagecraft.

Then she moved to Los Angeles and broke into Hollywood in the early 1990s where she appeared in TV series such as Melrose Place. Janssen had a starring role in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Perfect Mate (1992), as empathic metamorph Kamala, opposite Patrick Stewart. That same year, Janssen was offered the role of Jadzia Dax in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine but turned it down to pursue film roles.

Her first film was the crime drama Fathers and Sons (Paul Mones, 1992) with Jeff Goldblum. She played the female lead in the Horror film Lord of Illusions (1995) written and directed by Clive Barker. Then she was a sensation as femme fatale Xenia Onatopp, James Bond's (Pierce Brosnan) enemy in GoldenEye (Martin Campbell, 1995). Catherine Bray called it in 2020 in The Guardian 'my favourite film aged 12': "Famke Janssen’s GoldenEye character is a transparently ludicrous fantasy of a sexy, so-called 'strong female character'; the definitive bad-ass Bond babe with thighs that can (and do) crush a man to death, and a line in double-entendres to make a drag queen blush."

In an attempt to fight against typecasting after her Bond girl performance, Janssen began seeking out more intriguing support roles. She appeared in John Irvin's City of Industry (1997) with Harvey Keitel, Woody Allen's Celebrity (1998), Robert Altman's The Gingerbread Man (1998), and Ted Demme's Monument Ave (1998). Her career bloomed and she starred in such films as The Faculty (Robert Rodriguez, 1998), Rounders (John Dahl, 1998), Deep Rising (Stephen Sommers, 1998), and the supernatural Horror film House on Haunted Hill (William Malone, 1999) opposite Geoffrey Rush.


French postcard by Sonis, no. C. 609. Photo: Danjaq and United Artists Corporation. Famke Janssen, Pierce Brosnan and Isabella Scoruppo in Goldeneye (Martin Campbell, 1995).


Italian photo. Famke Janssen in GoldenEye (Martin Campbell, 1995).

A telepathic and telekinetic superhero

Famke Janssen made her name as the telepathic and telekinetic superhero Jean Grey in the blockbuster movie X-Men (Bryan Singer, 2000). The film received positive reviews from critics and was a box office success, grossing $296.3 million worldwide. Reviewer Skye_54 at IMDb: "The visual effects and the on-screen chemistry between the actors brings the X-characters to life! I especially enjoyed Famke Janssen's portrayal of the redheaded Jean Grey. There was action with intelligence, which sets this movie aside from other action films. I never would've expected depth, history, and origins from a movie that originated as a comic, but X-Men The Movie did just that!" The success of X-Men started a reemergence for the comic book and superhero film genre.

Janssen reprised the role in the sequel, X2/ X-Men 2 (Bryan Singer, 2003), where her character shows signs of increasing powers, but at the end of the film, she is presumably killed. Janssen returned as Jean, whose death in X2 awoke her dark alternate personality, Phoenix, in X-Men: The Last Stand (Brett Rattner, 2006). For that role, she won a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress. She returned as Jean in The Wolverine (James Mangold, 2013) as a hallucination of Wolverine, followed by a brief cameo for X-Men: Days of Future Past (Bryan Singer, 2014).

In 2002, Janssen landed the role of villainess Serleena in Men in Black II, but had to abandon the film due to a death in her family and was replaced by Lara Flynn Boyle. Janssen had a prominent role in the second season of the TV series Nip/Tuck (2003), as the seductive and manipulative life coach Ava Moore. She starred in Hide and Seek (John Polson, 2005) starring Robert De Niro. Janssen was lauded for her role as pool player Kailey Sullivan in the drama Turn the River (Chris Eigeman, 2007).

Famke Janssen was inspired to become an activist against corruption after playing Lenore Mills opposite Liam Neeson in the English-language French action-thriller Taken (Luc Besson, 2008) and now serves as the Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Office against Drugs and Crime. The film received mixed reviews from critics, but was a huge financial success, grossing $226 million and she played Lenore Mills also in the two sequels of the Taken film trilogy (2008–2014).

She made her directorial debut with the comedy-drama Bringing Up Bobby in 2011. She also wrote the screenplay for the film, which stars Milla Jovovich and Bill Pullman. She is also known for her roles in the Netflix original series Hemlock Grove (2013–2015), and ABC's How to Get Away with Murder (2014–2020). Janssen starred in the 2017 NBC crime thriller The Blacklist: Redemption. In 1995, Famke Janssen married writer and director Kip Williams, son of architect Tod Williams. They divorced in 2000. This year Famke Janssen will return as Jean Gray and Phoenix in Deadpool & Wolverine (Shawn Levy, 2024), an upcoming American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics characters Deadpool and Wolverine.


Vintage postcard. Image: American poster by Danjaq LLC and United Artists for GoldenEye (Martin Campbell, 1995) starring Pierce Brosnan, Izabella Scorupco and Famke Janssen.


British postcard by Memory Card, no. 672. Photo: Famke Janssen as Jean Grey in X-Men (Bryan Singer, 2000).

Sources: Catherine Bray (The Guardian), Brittany Johnson (IMDb), Skye_54 (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch, and English) and IMDb.