(LEFT) Jumper and necklace CHANEL, trousers DIANE VON FURSTENBERG, earring JENNIFER FISHER
(RIGHT) Jumpsuit CHANEL, earring JENNIFER FISHER
Jumper and necklace CHANEL, trousers DIANE VON FURSTENBERG, earring JENNIFER FISHER
Jumpsuit CHANEL, earring JENNIFER FISHER
A few years ago Pom Klementieff was living in Paris, a jobbing actress in small-budget French dramas. Today, she’s calling from her new home in LA, preparing to shoot the next instalments in the Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy Hollywoodblockbuster juggernauts.
The 31-year-old’s first big Stateside break was as an assassin in Spike Lee’s 2013 Old Boy. But it was her turn as bug-eyed, antenna-clad superheroine Mantis in this summer’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 that made industry types take interest, she says over the phone. “People were like, ‘Oh, who’s this girl?’ Every role is a step towards something bigger hopefully.”
We chat about favourite films, and despite her Spike Lee-and-Catherine Deneuve-studded filmography to date, she doesn’t go down the route of listing the works of obscure French auteurs as her must-sees. Instead, she wants to talk about…“Tropic Thunder! It’s a masterpiece!”
While she’s got plenty of time for the “dramatic and intense and deep and beautiful, which is great, and I love these movies, you know it’s really hard to do comedy. Funny actors – I mean, they’re the best. Steve Carell, he’s just amazing. And what’s his name, the British actor, who did The Office?”
(LEFT) Dress and boots CHANEL, earring JENNIFER FISHER
(RIGHT) Jumper and necklace CHANEL, trousers DIANE VON FURSTENBERG, earring JENNIFER FISHER, shoes CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN
Dress and boots CHANEL, earring JENNIFER FISHER
Jumper and necklace CHANEL, trousers DIANE VON FURSTENBERG, earring JENNIFER FISHER, shoes CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN
Ricky Gervais? “Yeah, he’s incredible!” It turns out that high on Klementieff’s career wish list is to star in a comedy, and “to be the funny one. Oftentimes what happens in comedies…the guys are doing funny stuff and cracking jokes, and the girl’s being like ‘oh, stop having fun guys’. I don’t want to be that. I wanna be the weirdo […] who’s annoying, who’s funny. What I love about my character in Guardians is that I get to be the weirdo, to be a bit off, you know?”
She got to test her comedy chops this August with a supporting role in indie comedy-drama Ingrid Goes West(which releases in the UK next week). In it, she plays a fame-hungry, Insta-famous blogger called Harley Chung opposite Elizabeth Olsen. In her own life, Klementieff says she has “a love and hate relationship” with social media. “It just takes up so much time. I try not to post too many selfies or too much personal stuff. I still want to keep my private life.”
Despite featuring in one of the highest-grossing films of the year, one consequence of Klementieff’s kooky Guardians get-up is that she doesn’t tend to get noticed too much day-to-day. “I’m not harassed, for sure. One thing that happens now [though], when I go to the airport, there’s fans.”
That fanbase is likely to grow in the coming months; at the time of writing, Pom ranks number two on film database giant IMDb’s list of most searched-for stars online. With interest like that, that coveted comedy role might come sooner than she thinks.
Taken from the Autumn 17 Issue of Wonderland; out now and available to buy here.