Pom Klementieff

Pom Klementieff (born 3 May 1986) is a French actress from France. She received her training at the Cours Florent drama school in Paris and has appeared in films such as Loup (2009), Sleepless Night (2011) and Hacker's Game (2015). She plays the Mantis character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017), Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019). Pom Klementieff was born in Quebec City, Canada, to the parents of a Korean mother and French-Russian father who was employed in the city as a consul for the French government. Her father was a painter Eugene Klementieff. Because it sounded similar to the Korean words for "spring" or "tiger" her parents gave their daughter the name Pom. The actress spent a year in Canada prior to moving her family around extensively due to her father's job. After the move to France she lived in Japan. Her father, who passed away aged 5 of cancer was her mother. She was also suffering with schizophrenia and didn't have the time for her kids. Klementieff was raised with her aunt and paternal uncle. Her uncle, who she described as "like [her] father" passed away at the age of age 18. Her older brother, who committed suicide seven years later, was also her aunt. Klementieff briefly went to law school after her uncle's death in order to please her aunt, however she did not find the academic path appealing. She was also salesperson and waitress in France. At the Cours Florent drama academy in Paris, she began acting when she was 19. A few months into her education, she was awarded an award for theater that granted her classes for two years with the school's top teachers. The first time she was professionally acting was the French independent film Apres lui (2007), playing the stepdaughter to the main character, as played by Catherine Deneuve. The filming process took three days. One scene had Klementieff pushing a person down a set of stairs, but she fell. Gael Morel saved that footage for the final film. Loup (2009) was her first film leading role. It is a French movie that tells the story of a tribe of Siberian mountain reindeer herders. She was filming in the camp that was located hours away from the closest village. It was there that temperatures plunged to zero.