Famke Janssen, who became a star playing an assassin who kills men between her thighs in the 1995 James Bond movie GoldenEye, has said that she always found the “Bond Girl” title “demeaning”.
The Dutch actor, whose credits also include the X-Men and Taken franchises, admitted to initial reluctance to accept the role in the 007 movie, which marked the Bond debut of Pierce Brosnan.
“I was very aware of the pitfalls of being a model-turned-actor-turned-Bond Girl,” Janssen told The Guardian. “I thought ‘Bond Girl’ was such a demeaning term. But I thought: ‘I have nothing to lose; if I do this, I’m going to go all the way.’”
She added that she improvised much of the character’s personality quirks in the film, solely in order to make her more memorable than traditional Bond Girls. Janssen played Xenia Onatopp, henchwoman to Sean Bean’s rogue agent 006, who throughout the movie appeared to receive orgasmic pleasure from violence.
“I grew up on Bond movies, because my dad used to like them, and so I always thought of them as comedies, as tongue-in-cheek,” she continued. “I thought: ‘Let me make this character unforgettable.’ I went for broke. It easily could have failed. I don’t know where I got the confidence.”
Speaking to The Independent in 2022, Janssen recalled facing assumptions about her character and her acting ability thanks to her history as a model and then in GoldenEye.
“I already had to deal with the stereotype of having been a model, but then I added another thing: model turned actress turned Bond Girl,” she said.
She added that she had to fight for a role as an ordinary, working-class widow in a 1997 independent film called City of Industry, with her co-star Harvey Keitel asking her if she had ever even done her own laundry.
“Trust me: I come from nothing,” Janssen said. “I’m self-made. I’ve cleaned toilets, worked in bars... this whole notion that I’m some kind of glamorous movie star is not remotely true.”
Janssen is currently starring in the Netflix comedy drama Amsterdam Empire, in which she plays a one-hit-wonder pop star engaged in a bitter war with her ex-husband, a marijuana magnate. Despite Janssen being born and raised in Amsterdam, the role marks the very first time in her long career that she has spoken entirely Dutch on film or television.
