{"id":731303,"date":"2026-06-28T16:36:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T16:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/731303\/"},"modified":"2026-06-28T16:36:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T16:36:12","slug":"famke-janssen-on-bond-audition-broken-ribs-during-pierce-brosnan-scene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/731303\/","title":{"rendered":"Famke Janssen on Bond Audition, Broken Ribs During Pierce Brosnan Scene"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAs the casting process heats up to find a new 007, Famke Janssen<\/a>, who starred opposite Pierce Brosnan<\/a> in 1995\u2019s GoldenEye<\/a>, has recalled her nerve-wracking audition to land the part as Xenia Onatopp in the iconic James Bond<\/a> franchise. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI became one of three, maybe four, finalists, and I was flown to London for a screen test with Pierce Brosnan. I remember being so nervous because I\u2019d never done a screen test in my life, and this was a Russian character with an accent,\u201d Janssen, 61, explained during a masterclass conversation with Vanity Fair\u2019s John Ross during the Mediterrane Film Festival in Malta last week. She landed the audition as she had been filming a role in Clive Barker\u2019s Lord of Illusions for Bond studio MGM, and studio executives had been impressed with her dailies. \u201cI didn\u2019t sleep the whole night. \u2026 I just sort of surrendered, and everything [my acting coach Harold Guskin] taught me, I took with me. And the rest is history.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJanssen with Vanity Fair\u2019s John Ross at Malta\u2019s Mediterrane Film Festival on June 25, 2026, as a clip from Martin Campbell\u2019s GoldenEye plays on the big screen. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Mediterrane Film Festival<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was a pivotal moment for the franchise as Brosnan was stepping into the lead role for what would be his first of four 007 installments, and the first Bond film following a six-year hiatus. Brosnan took over from Timothy Dalton (and paved the way for Daniel Craig). It was also a coup, to say the least, for Janssen, a Dutch talent who started her career as a model before moving to New York to study creative writing and literature at Columbia University. Prior to landing the Bond gig, she had done only a handful of bit parts in films and TV shows, including Fathers & Sons (her breakout role), Melrose Place and Star Trek: The Next Generation.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI grew up watching Bond movies because my dad was a very big fan of them,\u201d continued Janssen, who was born in Amstelveen, Netherlands. \u201cSo I had seen what they were, but I also was very aware of how women were portrayed in that genre. As a Dutch woman coming out of a family of very strong women with female empowerment being something that was very [important to me], it\u2019s really kind of colored my life in every way. I put so much pressure on myself in this role because I thought, I don\u2019t want to be one of those women. That\u2019s not how I want to start my career. I wanted it to be a launching pad for a career that has longevity where I can do different things. So, I worked hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking of, Ross asked Janssen about the steamy bathhouse scene<\/a> during which Xenia and Bond face off in an encounter that is both flirty and ferocious. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFrom the moment I got the part, I thought just thought, \u2018I\u2019m going for broke. I don\u2019t care. I am going to give it my all and work as hard as I can on making sure this character is going to be as memorable as possible.\u2019 So I threw myself into it,\u201d she explained, adding that her fearlessness came as a bit of a surprise considering how she grew up \u201cas a very, very shy\u201d kid who would often run and hide under a bed when guests came over to visit. \u201cThat scene was very difficult but also very liberating.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tAnd also very painful.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI did break my ribs during that scene, by the way,\u201d she revealed. \u201cThe walls were padded, and Pierce was meant to throw me against the wall. I told him, \u2018Pierce, it\u2019s so hard to act out this pain so just throw me against the wall.\u2019 He said, \u2018No, no, no. I don\u2019t want to hurt you.\u2019 I said, \u2018Don\u2019t worry about it, the walls are padded.\u2019 Famous last words.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBrosnan then threw Janssen up against the wall, she says, at which point she sustained broken ribs, though it wasn\u2019t until months later that she realized the extent of the injury. \u201cI couldn\u2019t speak at that point. They had to stop filming for a moment because they didn\u2019t know what was going on. I couldn\u2019t breathe. I couldn\u2019t do anything. I didn\u2019t learn, by the way, until I came back to New York \u2014 we shot for six months \u2014 that I had broke a rib. We just continued filming. They didn\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJanssen said that filmmakers had hired a \u201cpseudo psychic person\u201d to work on her body, and the specialist wasn\u2019t able to determine that she had broken ribs but did have a vision of a particular filmmaker she would eventually work with. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe predicted that I was going to work with Woody Allen, which is so crazy. She said, \u2018I can see Woody Allen smiling at you,\u2019 and then probably within a year or two, I worked with him,\u201d said the veteran star who landed a role opposite Kenneth Branagh in the auteur\u2019s 1998 film Celebrity. <\/p>\n

\n\tBack to Bond. Janssen said joining the franchise also delivered a steep learning curve. \u201cYou learn very quickly from day one that there is a publicity machine behind a Bond movie that is like no other franchise, not even like the X-Men<\/a>,\u201d said the actress, who went on to play Jean Grey in that blockbuster franchise. \u201cOver all these years, they know how to promote something. On our first week of filming \u2014 I hadn\u2019t even been on set yet \u2014 they had a press conference for 800 [journalists] like a junket with round tables. It was with the British press and they\u2019re notorious. I love you all but they are notoriously difficult. Right away, I was, like, \u2018Oh my God, this is it. This is what we\u2019re going to be dealing with.\u2019 [I was playing] such a specific character who was a foreigner and I was being catapulted into this big machine. There was a whole stigma about it.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tJanssen said it was tough navigating \u201cstigma to stigma\u201d as a model-turned-actress-turned-Bond girl. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was, like, on my God, what am I doing to myself and my career? I kept having to climb out of every box I was being put in. After [GoldenEye] came out, it really put me in the spotlight in a way that I had never experienced, and it gave me visibility and choices,\u201d she said, though she was very choosy. \u201cI turned down everything that had a gun, that had a \u2018this,\u2019 that had a \u2018that.\u2019 I waited until this one project came along called City of Industry with Harvey Keitel, and that was the one I liked because it was down and out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJanssen and Ross on stage inside the festival hub in Valletta during Malta\u2019s Mediterrane Film Festival presented by the Malta Film Commission. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Mediterrane Film Festival<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJanssen speaks inside the festival hub in Valletta during Malta\u2019s Mediterrane Film Festival presented by the Malta Film Commission. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Mediterrane Film Festival\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the casting process heats up to find a new 007, Famke Janssen, who starred opposite Pierce Brosnan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":731304,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,143963,109951,451,37117,3,62674,452,453,9616],"class_list":["post-731303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-famke-janssen","tag-goldeneye","tag-headlines","tag-james-bond","tag-news","tag-pierce-brosnan","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-x-men"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=731303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/731304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=731303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=731303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=731303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}