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Famke Janssen Biography

One of Hollywood's newest leading ladies, Famke Janssen refuses to fill a stereotype. Initially known as the lasciviously lethal assassin, Xenia Onatopp, in the James Bond megahit, GoldenEye, Janssen has since taken on many exciting roles in both studio and independent features. She was seen in Rounders starring opposite Matt Damon, John Turturro and John Malkovich, and in Woody Allen's Celebrity with Winona Ryder, Kenneth Branagh and Leonardo DiCaprio. Janssen played a lower-class Irish-American Bostonian in Ted Demme's Monument Avenue, an intense independent drama about Boston gang life that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, co-starring with Denis Leary, Colm Meany, Martin Sheen and Billy Crudup. In addition, Janssen was in The Faculty, directed by Robert Rodriquez. Last Fall, Janssen was seen in the box office hit The House on Haunted Hill, where she starred opposite Geoffrey Rush and Taye Diggs. Janssen's next release is the summer blockbuster X-Men in the role of Jean Grey -- a superhero with telekinetic and telepathic powers. Upcoming, she will have a starring role in Circus opposite John Hannah and in the romantic comedy Love & Sex, opposite Jon Favreau. Love & Sex premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival, with great acclaim going to Janssen's performance in a star-making turn. She will also appear with Favreau in the mobster movie Made, with Vince Vaughn, Sean ''Puffy'' Combs, Vincent Pastore and Jonathan Silverman.

Janssen played a kleptomaniac heroine opposite Treat Williams in Deep Rising. She also played Kenneth Branagh's character's wife in Robert Altman's The Gingerbread Man, a John Grisham original screenplay, along with Robert Downey Jr. and Daryl Hannah. Before that she was seen in John Irvin's City of Industry. Janssen made her feature film debut in Fathers and Sons, opposite Jeff Goldblum and Samuel L. Jackson. She also starred with Scott Bakula in Clive Barker's supernatural thriller Lord of Illusions for MGM/UA. Born in Holland, Janssen moved to the United States where she has made her home for the last 12 years. She majored in writing and literature at Columbia University and studied stage craft with Harold Guskin.