Pom Alexandra Klementieff (born 3 May 1986) is a French actress and model. She was trained at the Cours Florent drama school in Paris and appeared in such French films as The Easy Way (2008) and Sleepless Night (2011), before making her American film debut in Oldboy (2013).
Klementieff received worldwide recognition for her role as Mantis in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), and Avengers: Endgame (2019).
Pom Klementieff was born in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada, to a Korean mother and French-Russian father, who was working there as a consul with the government of France. She is a French citizen, and does not have Canadian citizenship because jus soli does not apply to children of diplomats. Her grandfather was the Russian painter Eugene Klementieff.[6] Her parents chose the name "Pom" because it is similar in pronunciation to the Korean words for both "spring" (ë´„) and "tiger" (ë²”). Klementieff lived in Canada for one year before her family began travelling extensively due to her father's job. They lived in Japan and the Ivory Coast, before settling in France.
Klementieff's father died of cancer when she was 5, and her mother had schizophrenia and was unable to care for children, so Klementieff was raised by her paternal uncle and aunt. Her uncle, whom she described as "like [her] second father", died on her 18th birthday, and her older brother committed suicide seven years later, on her 25th birthday. Klementieff briefly attended law school after her uncle's death to appease her aunt but did not find the career path appealing. She also worked as a waitress and saleswoman in France. She started acting at age 19 at the Cours Florent drama school in Paris. A few months into her education, she won a theatre competition that awarded her free classes for two years with the school's top teachers.
