Pom Klementieff Bio
Pom Alexandra Klementieff (born 3 May 1986) is a French actress. She is best known for playing Mantis in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films beginning in 2017 and for portraying the assassin Paris in the final two Mission: Impossible films released in 2023 and 2025. Klementieff began her professional acting career in 2007 with a French independent film and has since built an international résumé spanning independent cinema, blockbuster franchises, and genre television.
Early Life and Background
Pom Alexandra Klementieff was born on May 3, 1986, in Quebec City, Canada. Her mother, Yu Ri Park, is Korean, and her father, Alexis Klementieff, is of Russian and French heritage. Her paternal grandfather was the Russian painter Eugene Klementieff. Her parents gave her the name Pom because it sounds similar to the Korean words for both spring and tiger. Her father worked in Canada as a consul for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Because of her father’s diplomatic posting, Klementieff spent part of her childhood in Kyoto, Japan, and later in the Ivory Coast, before the family returned to France and settled about an hour from Paris. After her father died of cancer when she was five, her mother, who had schizophrenia, was unable to care for her children. Klementieff was raised by a paternal uncle and aunt. Her uncle died on her 18th birthday, and her older brother, Namou, died by suicide seven years later, on her 25th birthday.
Path to Acting
After her uncle’s death, Klementieff moved to Paris, where she initially studied law to satisfy her aunt, although she did not find the subject engaging. She supported herself by working as a waitress and a saleswoman. At the age of 19, she enrolled at the Cours Florent drama school in Paris. A few months into her training, she won a theater competition and earned two years of free classes with the school’s top teachers, an early sign of her commitment to acting.
Pom Klementieff Career
Early Career (2007–2012)
Klementieff’s first professional acting job was the French independent film Après lui in 2007, in which she played the stepdaughter of the protagonist portrayed by Catherine Deneuve. Filming her scenes took three days, and in one moment she was supposed to push a co-star down a set of stairs but accidentally fell down the stairs herself. Director Gaël Morel kept the unplanned take in the final film. Her first leading role followed in Loup (2009), a French drama about a tribe of reindeer herders in the Siberian mountains. During production, she stayed in a remote camp where temperatures dropped well below zero, worked with real wolves, rode reindeer, and swam with a horse in a lake.
Breakthrough (2013–Present)
Klementieff made her Hollywood debut in Spike Lee’s Oldboy (2013), a remake of the South Korean film of the same name. She portrayed Haeng-bok, the bodyguard of the antagonist played by Sharlto Copley, and trained three hours a day for two months to perform a fight scene with star Josh Brolin. After filming wrapped, she relocated to Los Angeles to pursue more Hollywood auditions. Her subsequent credits include the indie film Hacker’s Game (2015), the romance Newness (2017), and the black comedy-drama Ingrid Goes West (2017).
Klementieff achieved worldwide recognition when she joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Mantis, beginning with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017), followed by Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019). She went on to appear in Black Mirror and Uncut Gems in 2019, voice The Addams Family in 2019, and play the recurring role of Martel in HBO’s Westworld in 2020. She reprised Mantis in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023) and took on the role of Paris in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) and Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025). Her additional recent work includes the thriller The Killer’s Game (2024).
Notable Works and Milestones
Across her career, Klementieff’s signature roles include Mantis in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Paris in the Mission: Impossible series. Her move from French independent cinema to major Hollywood franchises marks the defining arc of her career to date.
Pom Klementieff Award Nominations
No verified award nominations are available from the supplied sources for Pom Klementieff at this time.
Pom Klementieff Awards Won
No verified awards won are available from the supplied sources for Pom Klementieff at this time.
Pom Klementieff Family
Klementieff is the daughter of Yu Ri Park, a Korean woman, and Alexis Klementieff, a Russian-French man who worked as a consul for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Her paternal grandfather was the Russian painter Eugene Klementieff. After the death of her father from cancer and the inability of her mother to care for her, Klementieff was raised by a paternal uncle and aunt in France. She also had an older brother, Namou.
Personal Life
Klementieff learned English by watching American sitcoms. She is a martial artist who holds a purple belt in taekwondo and is an avid skydiver. While filming Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, she expressed an interest in skydiving to Tom Cruise, who gifted her lessons after filming wrapped. During her May 22, 2025, appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Klementieff stated that she had completed 233 jumps.
