Pom Klementieff

Pom Klementieff (born 3 May 1986) is a French actress. She received her training at the Cours Florent drama school in Paris and has been featured in films such as Loup (2009), Sleepless Night (2011) and Hacker's Game (2015). She plays the role of Mantis in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), and Avengers: Endgame (1999). Pom Klementieff was born in Quebec City to a Korean father and a French-Russian wife. He was working as a consul with the French government. Eugene Klementieff was her grandfather. Pom was her name since it is a symphony of the Korean words "spring" and "tiger" in Korean. Klementieff was a Canadian citizen for a single year. Her family was able to travel extensively because of her father's work. They lived in Japan and the Ivory Coast, before settling in France. The father of Klementieff died from cancer when she was just 5, and her mother had schizophrenia and was incapable of caring for children, so Klementieff was raised by her paternal uncle and aunt. Her uncle, who she described as "like [her] second father" was killed on her 18th birthday, and her older brother committed suicide seven years after, this time on her 25th birthday. Klementieff was able to go to law school following the death of her uncle, however she did not find this profession appealing. In France, she worked as a waitresse and saleswoman. At the Cours Florent drama academy in Paris the actress began her journey into acting when she was 19. Within a couple of months of her education, she was awarded an acting competition which awarded her free tuition for two years with the school's top teachers. The first role she had in professional acting was in the French independent film Apres lui (2007), acting as the stepdaughter in the film of the main character, who was played by Catherine Deneuve. Three days were spent on filming her scenes. One scene saw Klementieff pushing someone down the set stairs, but she fell. Gael Morel saved that footage for the final film. Her debut lead role came in Loup (2009), a French film that follows a tribe of reindeer herders in the Siberian mountains. The film was shot in a camp hours away from the nearest village. The location was the one where temperatures plunged to zero.