Famke Janssen

Famke Beumer Janssen (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈfɑmkə ˈbøːmər ˈjɑnsə(n)]; born 5 November 1964) is a Dutch actress and former model. She played Xenia Onatopp in GoldenEye (1995), Jean Grey / Phoenix in the X-Men film series (2000–2014), and Lenore Mills in the Taken film trilogy (2008–2014). 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 roles in the Netflix original series Hemlock Grove (2013–2015), FX's Nip/Tuck (2003–2010), and ABC's How to Get Away with Murder (2014–2020). Janssen starred in the 2017 NBC crime thriller The Blacklist: Redemption. Most recently, she is starring as Betty Jonkers, a scorned wife who is determined to destroy her husband’s Amsterdam coffee shop empire in the Netflix Dutch crime series Amsterdam Empire (2025). This marks the first time she has performed speaking her native language, Dutch.

Early life

Famke Beumer Janssen was born on November 5, 1964, in Amstelveen, the Netherlands. She has two sisters, director Antoinette Beumer and actress Marjolein Beumer, both of whom changed their surnames to Beumer after their parents divorced.

In addition to her native Dutch, Janssen speaks English and French. She learned German, but has not kept up with it. Following her high school graduation, Janssen studied economics for a year at the University of Amsterdam, which she later called "the stupidest idea I ever had." In the early 1990s, she enrolled at Columbia University's School of General Studies to study creative writing and literature.