Famke Beumer Janssen]; born 5 November 1965) is a Dutch actress, director, screenwriter,
and former fashion model.
She played Xenia Onatopp in GoldenEye, Jean Grey/Phoenix in the X-Men film series, Ava
Moore on Nip/Tuck, and Lenore Mills in Taken and its sequel, Taken 2.
In 2008, she was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador for Integrity by the United Nations.
She made her directorial debut with Bringing Up Bobby in 2011.
Early life and education Janssen was born in Amstelveen, Noord-Holland,
Netherlands.
Her first name, Famke, means "girl" in West Frisian, the native language of the Dutch
province Friesland.
She was given both her mother and father's surnames; Beumer and Janssen.
She retained the name Janssen.
She has two sisters, director Antoinette Beumer and actress Marjolein Beumer, both of whom
changed their surnames to simply Beumer.
In addition to her native Dutch, Janssen speaks English and French.
She also learned German, but has not kept up with it.
Following her high school graduation, Janssen studied economics for a year at the University
of Amsterdam, which she later called "the stupidest idea I ever had."
In the early 1990s, she enrolled at Columbia University to study creative writing and literature.
Career Modelling and early 1990s
In 1984, Janssen moved to the United States to begin her professional career as a fashion
model.
She signed with Elite Model Management and worked for Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel, and
Victoria's Secret.
She starred in a 1988 commercial for the perfume Exclamation by Coty, Inc.
Her looks have been compared to Hedy Lamarr and other 1940s films stars.
After retiring from modelling in the early 1990s, Janssen had guest roles on several
television series, including a starring role in the 1992 Star Trek: The Next Generation
episode "The Perfect Mate", as empathic metamorph Kamala, opposite Patrick Stewart, with whom
she later starred in the X-Men film series.
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 role was alongside Jeff Goldblum in the 1992 crime drama film Fathers & Sons.
1990s–2000 In 1995, Janssen appeared in Pierce Brosnan's
first James Bond film, GoldenEye, as femme fatale Xenia Onatopp.
She also appeared in Lord of Illusions with Scott Bakula.
In an attempt to fight against typecasting after her Bond girl performance, Janssen began
seeking out more intriguing support roles, appearing in John Irvin's City of Industry,
Woody Allen's Celebrity, Robert Altman's The Gingerbread Man, and Ted Demme's Monument
Ave.
Denis Leary, her co-star in Monument Ave., was impressed by how easily she blended in,
initially not recognizing her as she was already in character.
In the late 1990s, she also appeared in The Faculty, Rounders, Deep Rising, and House
on Haunted Hill.
X-Men films In 2000, Janssen played superhero Dr. Jean
Grey in the Marvel Studios film X-Men.
She later reprised the role in the 2003 sequel, X2 where her character shows signs of increasing
powers but at the end of the film, she is presumably killed.
Janssen returns as a very much alive Jean whose death in X2 awoke her dark alternate
personality, Phoenix in X-Men: The Last Stand.
At the end of the film, she is killed by Wolverine, who only does it because Jean asks him to,
not wanting to hurt anyone when Phoenix is in control.
For that role, she won a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress.
She returned as Jean in the 2013 film The Wolverine as a hallucination of Wolverine's.
In 2014, Janssen reprised her role of Jean Grey in a brief cameo for X-Men: Days of Future
Past, as did a few of the original actors from the first three films including Anna
Paquin and James Marsden.
In the film, Wolverine went back in the time and changed the course of the future, causing
the death of Jean and Scott to have never happened.
2002–present
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.
In addition, Janssen had a prominent role in the second season of the popular TV series
Nip/Tuck, as the seductive and manipulative life coach Ava Moore, which earned her Hollywood
Life's Breakthrough Artist of the Year Award.
She reprised her role in the final two episodes of the series.
In 2007, she starred in Turn the River, for which she was awarded the Special Recognition
Best Actress Award at the Hamptons International Film Festival.
The following year, she starred in Luc Besson's Taken.
Janssen also continued to work in television, appearing in TV pilots for NBC's cop drama
Winters and Showtime's The Farm, a The L Word spin-off set in a women's prison.
Both pilots were rejected by their respective networks.
Janssen also provided the Dutch-language narration for the Studio Tram Tour at all Disney theme
parks.
In 2011, Janssen made her directorial début with the drama Bringing Up Bobby.
She also wrote the screenplay to the film, which stars Milla Jovovich, Bill Pullman,
and Marcia Cross.
She reprised her role as Lenore Mills in Taken 2 and starred as the main villain Muriel in
Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters.
Janssen has starred in the Netflix Original, horror thriller television series Hemlock
Grove since 2013 where she plays the role of family matriarch Olivia Godfrey.
Personal life and activism Janssen was married to writer and director
Kip Williams, son of architect Tod Williams, from 1995 to 2000.
Janssen appeared with her dog Licorice, a brindle Boston Terrier, in a 2007 PETA campaign
to raise awareness for animal rights.
The campaign used the slogan "Be an Angel for Animals."
On 28 January 2008, she was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador for Integrity for the United Nations
Office on Drugs and Crime at a United Nations anti-corruption conference held in Nusa Dua,
Bali.
Filmography Film
Television Awards and nominations
References
External links Famke Janssen at the Internet Movie Database
Famke Janssen at the TCM Movie Database Famke Janssen at AllMovie
Famke Janssen at the Fashion Model Directory