Famke Janssen

Famke Janssen 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.

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. Her first film role was alongside Jeff Goldblum in the 1992 crime drama film "Fathers & Sons."

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."

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 (played by Hugh Jackman), 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.

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.

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.

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." In 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.