Bond Girls
The Best of 007's Girls

Xenia Onatopp played by Famke Janssen in 1995’s GoldenEye

Xenia Onatopp played by Famke Janssen

Dutch actress Famke Janssen worked as a model in New York in the early 1990s, and moved to Los Angeles several years later to take up acting. One of her first television appearances was in 1992 in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The 1995 James Bond flick GoldenEye was the first to star Pierce Brosnan as James Bond. This was the 17th film in the James Bond series, and was unrelated to any of novelist Ian Fleming’s work, unlike its 16 predecessors. In this movie, an arms syndicate wants to use the GoldenEye satellite weapon on London so as to cause a worldwide financial meltdown.

Xenia Onatopp played by Famke Janssen

In addition to being the first Pierce Brosnan Bond film, it was also the first where M was cast with Judi Dench – the first woman to play that character. The decision to cast M as a woman is believed to be inspired by Stella Rimington becoming the head of the British MI5 in 1992.

In GoldenEye, Janssen played the role of Xenia Onatopp, a villainous former fighter pilot for the Soviet Air Force. Her preferred method of dispatching with enemies is to crush them between her strong thighs. The movie was the first Bond film to be made since the collapse of Soviet communism, and there was speculation that the Bond series could fold, since so many of James Bond’s enemies were Soviets. But the movie was successful, and the Bond franchise continues with Daniel Craig currently in the role of 007.

Janssen, meanwhile, moved on to roles in the X-Men movie series, and won a Saturn Award for her role in X-Men: The Last Stand. She had a fairly major role in the second season of television series Nip/Tuck as a transsexual life coach. She has also tried to fight being typecast by taking roles in movies by Woody Allen and Robert Altman.