Pom Klementieff: The actress giving Tom Cruise a run for his money in Mission: Impossible
With roles that demand both discipline and danger, Pom Klementieff has trained with wolves, boxed for parts, and learned to skydive on Tom Cruise’s recommendation.
Pom Klementieff is a bit of an adrenaline junkie.
Lately, the thing giving her the biggest kick? Skydiving. “Tom got me started on that,” she says casually – Tom, of course, being that Tom: as in Cruise, her co-star in Mission: Impossible.
He gifted her skydiving lessons as a wrap present after filming Dead Reckoning – Part One, 2023’s blockbuster instalment in the action saga. “I don’t do it in the movie,” she says, “but it’s one of the things that makes me really happy in life.”
Klementieff, 38, is speaking to Review from her New York home, bleach-blonde pixie cut perfectly mussed, framing her sharp expressive features. Behind her, aKill Bill poster glares down – an apt choice for an actor drawn to roles where she can throw a punch.
There’s a gung-ho quality to the way Klementieff approaches just about everything. For her first lead role, in the French indie film Loup (Wolf) – a drama about Siberian reindeer herders – she lived in a remote mountain camp where temperatures plunged well below zero, hours from the nearest village. There she led horses through icy lakes, rode reindeer, and worked with real wolves.
Born in Canada to a Korean mother and a Russian-French diplomat father, Klementieff spent her early years in constant motion, living in Japan, the Ivory Coast, then finally France. She was five when her father passed away from cancer, and with her mother unable to care for her because of schizophrenia, she was raised by her aunt and uncle.
It was a childhood defined by upheaval, but the rootlessness now seems to suit her and one gets the sense she rather enjoys slipping in and out of other people’s lives. “I think that’s the beauty of this job,” she says. “Being able to immerse yourself in something very specific, depending on which character you’re going to play. It’s like getting the opportunity to enter a completely different reality. It’s exciting,” she says.
By the time Klementieff arrived in Hollywood, she was used to being uncomfortable. When she found out Spike Lee was remaking Oldboy – Park Chan-wook’s Korean cult classic – and that the role involved martial arts, she immediately signed up for boxing lessons before she even had an audition.
“I like to do things that I suck at to start with, and then I fall, I stand back up, I fall, I stand back up … and then at some point, I don’t fall anymore. That makes me happy,” she says.
That mixture of discipline and daredevilry is precisely what makes her such a natural fit for Mission: Impossible. In Dead Reckoning she played Paris, a near-mute assassin with kabuki-white makeup, combat boots, and the kind of presence that doesn’t require words – at least not until the third act. Was it difficult having to convey so much while saying so little? “Not really,” she shrugs.
“I talked a lot with Christopher McQuarrie, the director, and he was telling me how much beauty there is in stillness. Sometimes, it’s better not to speak. There are so many words in everything – so much content, so much blah blah blah. Sometimes, going for less gives a lot of power to the character – because as soon as they actually speak, everyone listens.”
It’s an unusually restrained performance in a franchise famous for its sheer maximisation – where trains crash off cliffs and motorbikes fly off mountains and Tom Cruise risks life, limb, and SAG insurance guidelines to bring back the golden age of blockbuster moviemaking.
“There’s so much preparation behind everything,” Klementieff gushes. “Oftentimes, I would just visit the set to watch them work.”
Klementieff, who grew up obsessing over the franchise and “manifested” the role, speaks of the production with wide-eyed reverence. “When you shoot the movie, everyone is in sync – to make the best image, the best sound, the best practical movie. Instead of being like ‘Oh well, we’ll fix it in post’.”
Cruise, naturally, looms large. She lights up when talking about him – not with gushing deference but with the zeal of someone who’s found a kindred spirit in intensity. “I love Tom’s taste in acting and action scenes and the people that he collaborates with. He’s always choosing the best music.
“Even before shooting the scene, I would hum the song. Just to put a little fire in my performance,” she says, a grin spreading across her face. And with that, she bursts into Lalo Schifrin’s theme. Dum dum dum dum dum dum …
You can’t fault her there. The Mission: Impossible franchise has become one of the most critically bulletproof action sagas in modern cinema – surviving changes in tone, directors, and hairstyles (Ethan Hunt’s mop in M: I-2 deserves its own footnote).
What started in 1996 as a sexy Brian De Palma thriller has morphed into a consistently thrilling, operatic epic of global destruction and high-gloss espionage. Cruise and McQuarrie – who has directed four of the franchise’s eight instalments – have turned it into a cathedral for real stunts, big screen cinema, and the kind of obsessive craftsmanship that studio executives would probably rather wipe out.
“There’s a lot of production nowadays that just relies heavily on post-production, with special effects or changing the lighting in post. But it doesn’t look the same. You know?” Klementieff says.
“When you get every detail right while shooting it, and you really focus on that, it shows in the final product. And when you see the combo on the monitor, it’s just amazing. It’s not like ‘Oh, this looks weird, but we’ll fix it in post’. I’ve read that so much in movies, and I’m like ‘Guys, come on’.”
Klementieff fits snugly into that world – not just because she’s game for a fight but because she cares deeply about character. Even arriving at the right costume was a process. She worked closely with designer Jill Taylor to ensure Paris didn’t wear heels. “I wanted to fight, and it’s hard to do kicks when you’re wearing heels,” she says. “I want to be grounded, and run fast, and kick someone fast.”
It wasn’t just a matter of practicality. She wanted the character to have a visual identity that made sense; from the Doc Marten clompers to the Commedia dell’arte-inspired makeup she wears to a lavish Venetian party in Dead Reckoning: Part One.“I love doing fittings. I could spend hours choosing things and changing little details – the cut of something, or lowering something to make it shorter,” she says. “You can change so much of a silhouette or the way someone moves with an outfit.”
It’s this obsession with movement, and how to harness it, that seems to define her approach. She talks about acting as if it’s a martial art. “What I love in life is learning new things. I always love the relationship of student and sensei,” she says, and then immediately self-corrects. “I would never say master … that’s a lot.”
She’s learned to fight, fall, and fly. She’s learned to skydive, to box, to act without speaking. And now, in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning she’s back for more.
At this point in the franchise the stakes have become slightly more abstract. This time, the villain isn’t a man – it’s an all-seeing AI called The Entity, capable of erasing identities, hijacking truths, and rewriting history with a single keystroke.
“It’s complicated and scary for sure,” she says, when asked whether the AI plot line carries a message for actors, especially now that deepfakes and digital doubles are no longer science fiction.
But she insists the film isn’t didactic.
“Everyone is going to have a different interpretation when they watch the movie. I think it’s beautiful when we leave room for people’s interpretations and sensibility. I think it would make the message smaller and more mundane if we were to say ‘Oh this is the message – believe it’.
“For me, a movie moves you in different ways, depending on who you are and what your life experience is.”
Still, she insists Mission: Impossible is best experienced the old-fashioned way: in the dark, on a huge screen, surrounded by strangers. “It’s a communal experience. You have to share it with an audience. The level of detail that goes into the storytelling, the action scenes, the sound, the music – it’s overwhelming, in a good way. It’s emotional.”
She pauses. “And it’s better than watching it on some tiny screen. You know?”
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning opens in cinemas on May 17.
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