Pom Klementieff made a splash in Hollywood’s blockbuster scene in her starring role as Mantis in Marvel Studios’ Guardians of the Galaxy series of movies. This summer, viewers got a chance to witness her acting and physical chops in another long-running action movie franchise. Ahead of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One‘s release, Klementieff sat down with Variety to talk about her character’s backstory, influences, and the training she underwent years ago that put her in the right shape to essay the role of French-speaking Paris.
Speaking of her character’s backdrop, Klementieff explained how she concocted the backstory for Paris on her own, citing lead Tom Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie’s penchant for casting actors, then collaborating with them to work on their character, something that Hayley Atwell also echoed in her interview.
My character, I think, is on a path of destruction and she’s a very skilled fighter, and she enjoys to fight and to kill people. But there is also an underlying feeling of betrayal and of loneliness from being an orphan, so there’s a deep wound underneath. There’s a lot of things that I came up with myself, because what Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise do is cast the actors, and then they build the character around the actor’s abilities.
To embrace the role of a skilled fighter, Klementieff underwent extensive training with stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood. But she also cited her prior rigorous martial arts training as helpful in getting her in the necessary shape to embody her character’s physicality.
We trained very hard with Wade Eastwood. But I had been training for years with a martial artist who taught me how to punch, how to kick, so I had been doing kickboxing, boxing, taekwondo.
Lastly, when talking about the inspirations behind her character, Klementieff quoted a wide array of influences ranging from Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill to Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan movies.
Quentin Tarantino is one of my favorite directors, so of course I always watch Kill Bill. I watched movies with Bruce Lee, with Jackie Chan and some French movies as well, because it was not just about the fight and the physicality — it was also the way the character walks. I was inspired by movies with Jean-Paul Belmondo to find a cockiness to the character. And movies with Clint Eastwood, Takeshi Kitano, all these beautiful characters that barely speak but convey so many emotions as well.
Check out the full interview in the source link below where Klementieff expresses her desire to do more action movies, becoming an “action” star, and more.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is currently in theaters.
