Famke Janssen

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Famke Beumer Janssen (born c. 1964) is a Dutch actress, director, screenwriter and former fashion model.

She played Xenia Onatopp in GoldenEye (1995), Jean Grey/Phoenix in the X-Men film series (2000–14), Ava Moore on Nip/Tuck and Lenore Mills in Taken (2008) and its sequels, Taken 2 (2012) and Taken 3 (2014). 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. She is also known for her role in the Netflix Original Series Hemlock Grove (TV series) and for her role in ABC’s How To Get Away With Murder. Janssen is scheduled to star in the 2016–2017 season crime thriller, The Blacklist: Redemption, on NBC.

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 (2012) and Taken 3 (2014). She starred as the main villain Muriel in Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013). 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 is scheduled to star in an upcoming NBC crime thriller, The Blacklist: Redemption (a spinoff of The Blacklist), beginning in the fall of 2016.

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