Famke Janssen says she consciously walked away from the spotlight after the fame she achieved from GoldenEye felt like getting “thrown to the wolves.”
MGM
Fame comes with a price, and it’s not one that everyone is willing to pay. Veteran actress Famke Janssen discovered that she was one such person following the fame she had achieved with her breakout role in the James Bond movie GoldenEye. Released in 1994 and starring Pierce Brosnan in his first Bond film, GoldenEye also featured Janssen as the fierce and memorably villain Xenia Onatopp.
In a new interview with The Independent, Janssen says how becoming an overnight celebrity had a major effect on her career. She describes the constant attention she’d been getting in the press, regardless of whether it was good or bad, as getting “thrown to the wolves.” Realizing that she would not be able to control the media, Janssen says that the media attention had specifically caused her to lead a less glamorous life compared to other movie stars by getting more selective with her roles and staying off of social media.
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“The Bond movie dictated a lot of my relationship with the press. … Honestly, after GoldenEye I felt like I was thrown to the wolves. It was just an onslaught of attention, good and bad and everything in between. I realize every actor in the world thinks they can control the press, but ultimately the press always wins. I decided I’d rather be less famous and do things on my terms. That means I don’t make as much money as other people do. I don’t date famous people. I’m not on social media… But fame comes at a price, and it wasn’t one that I was willing to pay.”
Janssen says she intentionally turned down high-paying roles in major motion pictures that were quick to come after her GoldenEye success as she knew that the best way for her to make it in show business would have been to avoid those more famous roles.
“It was a very conscious decision to take a different path. I had to create longevity for myself, and work on my craft. I would have been much more famous and made much more money if I’d just gone with whatever was given to me in those moments. But that’s never been the way that I do things.”
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Famke Janssen Wanted to Avoid Stereotyping
Orion Pictures
In the interview, Janssen also talks about how she also had to deal with stereotyping with the way others in the business saw her. Her success in modeling coupled with her status as a Bond girl had given some people the false impression that she hadn’t worked hard to get to where she was with her career. Janssen describes an incident from the set of City of Industry with co-star Harvey Keitel questioning if she was right for the role of a working-class woman.
“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. Harvey Keitel was all, ‘Can you even do your own laundry?’ – that kind of thing. Trust me: I come from nothing. 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 would go on to take a role as Jean Grey in the X-Men movie series and has more recently appeared in films like The Vault and Dangerous. She is also set to appear in the upcoming action movie Boy Kills World from director Moritz Mohr. For now, she can be seen in the new movie Recurring Love.
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