Famke Janssen

FAMKE JANSSEN is a multi-award-winning actress, who made her directorial debut with Bringing Up Bobby, which she also wrote. The movie stars Milla Jovovich, Bill Pullman, Marcia Cross, Rory Cochrane and Spencer List.

Janssen originated the role of Lenore in 2008's action thriller Taken. Since then, she top-lined Jonathan Sanger's 100 Feet, which shot in Budapest; Jean-Paul Salomé's The Chameleon; and the drama Down the Shore alongside James Gandolfini. She was seen starring opposite Jeremy Renner in Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters for Paramount.

Janssen starred in the independent film The Wackness, opposite Ben Kingsley, which premiered at the Sundance Festival in January 2008. She played the character of Jean Grey in three blockbuster X-Men films. The first two were directed by Bryan Singer, and the third by Brett Ratner. The films' all-star casts include Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, James Marsden and Anna Paquin.

Janssen received a Saturn Award for best supporting actress for X-Men: The Last Stand. She was awarded with Special Jury Best Actress Prize at Hamptons Film Festival for her work in Turn the River.

In 2006, Janssen appeared in the independent film The Ten, which premiered at Sundance in January 2007. That same year, she filmed the independent film The Treatment opposite Ian Holm.

Janssen was awarded with the Golden Starfish Award for Career Achievement in Acting at the Hamptons Film Festival, and the Susan B. Anthony Failure is Impossible Award at the High Falls Film Festival.

Janssen had a recurring role on the FX original drama series Nip/Tuck, for which she received a Movieline Breakthrough Award.

Janssen starred in Hide and Seek, a psychological suspense thriller, opposite Robert DeNiro and Dakota Fanning; Eulogy, which premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival; and opposite Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson in I Spy for director Betty Thomas.

She starred in Gary Fleder's thriller Don't Say a Word opposite Michael Douglas, and in Jon Favreau's Made. Janssen earned critical-acclaim for her star-making performance opposite Favreau in Valerie Breiman's Love and Sex, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2000.

Previous credits include William Malone's House on Haunted Hill opposite Geoffrey Rush, Robert Rodriguez's The Faculty, John Dahl's Rounders opposite Edward Norton and Matt Damon, and Woody Allen's Celebrity, opposite Kenneth Branagh and Leonardo DiCaprio. Additional credits include Stephen Sommers' Deep Rising for Disney and Robert Altman's The Gingerbread Man, in which she starred opposite Kenneth Branagh and Robert Downey, Jr.

Janssen played a lower-class Irish-American Bostonian in Ted Demme's Monument Avenue opposite Martin Sheen and Billy Crudup. She starred in John Irvin's City of Industry opposite Harvey Keitel.

Janssen's big screen breakthrough came when she starred as the lasciviously lethal assassin, Xenia Onatopp, in the James Bond mega-hit GoldenEye. Born in Holland, Janssen moved to the United States, where she now resides. She majored in writing and literature at Columbia and studied stage-craft with Harold Guskin.

© 2012 20th Century Fox and Blue Sky Studios