'GoldenEye': Famke Janssen opens up about breaking ribs during iconic fight scene with Pierce Brosnan

Washington [US], June 29 (ANI): As the search for the next James Bond gathers momentum, ‘GoldenEye’ star Famke Janssen has looked back on her own journey into the iconic franchise, recalling a nerve-wracking screen test with Pierce Brosnan and revealing that she unknowingly broke a rib while filming one of the movie’s most memorable action sequences.

As per The Hollywood Reporter, she recently appeared at a masterclass at the Mediterrane Film Festival in Malta, where she reflected on landing the role of Xenia Onatopp in the 1995 Bond film opposite Brosnan, who was making his debut as 007.

“I 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’d never done a screen test in my life, and this was a Russian character with an accent,” Janssen said, as per The Hollywood Reporter.

The actress said she secured the audition after executives at MGM were impressed by her work while she was filming Lord of Illusions. Despite the opportunity, she admitted the pressure was overwhelming.

“I didn’t sleep the whole night… I just sort of surrendered, and everything [my acting coach Harold Guskin] taught me, I took with me. And the rest is history,” she said, as per The Hollywood Reporter.

Janssen also spoke about the responsibility she felt while taking on the role of Xenia Onatopp, saying she wanted to challenge conventional portrayals of women in Bond films.

“I grew up watching Bond movies because my dad was a very big fan of them,” she said, adding, “I put so much pressure on myself in this role because I thought, I don’t want to be one of those women. That’s 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.”

One of the film’s best-known sequences was the intense bathhouse confrontation between Bond and Xenia.

Janssen said she committed fully to making the character memorable.

“From the moment I got the part, I thought just thought, ‘I’m going for broke. I don’t 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.’ So I threw myself into it,” she said, describing the scene as “very difficult but also very liberating.”

The sequence, however, came at a physical cost.

“I did break my ribs during that scene, by the way,” Janssen revealed.

Recalling the incident, she said Brosnan initially hesitated to throw her against a padded wall during filming.

“I told him, ‘Pierce, it’s so hard to act out this pain so just throw me against the wall.’ He said, ‘No, no, no. I don’t want to hurt you.’ I said, ‘Don’t worry about it, the walls are padded.’ Famous last words,” she said, as per The Hollywood Reporter.

According to Janssen, filming stopped briefly after the stunt because she was unable to breathe.

“I couldn’t speak at that point. They had to stop filming for a moment because they didn’t know what was going on. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t learn, by the way, until I came back to New York, we shot for six months, that I had broken a rib. We just continued filming. They didn’t know,” she said, as per The Hollywood Reporter.

The actress also shared an unusual anecdote from the production, saying filmmakers had hired a “pseudo psychic person” to work on her body after the injury.

While the specialist did not identify the broken rib, Janssen said the psychic predicted she would one day work with filmmaker Woody Allen.

“She predicted that I was going to work with Woody Allen, which is so crazy. She said, ‘I can see Woody Allen smiling at you,’ and then probably within a year or two, I worked with him,” Janssen said.

Looking back on her Bond experience, Janssen said joining the franchise exposed her to an unmatched publicity campaign.

“You 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,” she said.

She recalled attending a major press conference during the first week of filming before she had even appeared on set, describing it as an introduction to the scale of the Bond promotional machine.

Janssen also reflected on the challenges of being labelled as a model-turned-actress and Bond girl, saying she had to work hard to avoid being typecast.

“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,” she said, adding, “I turned down everything that had a gun, that had a ‘this,’ that had a ‘that.’ 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.” (ANI)

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