Pom Klementieff Took Inspiration From 'Weird Videos' Of A Bird For Her Mission: Impossible Character

In "Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One," the new character of Paris barely has a handful of lines to speak. Yet, thanks to her being played by the superlative Pom Klementieff, her presence in the film is indelible, making her one of the best henchwomen characters in any movie, let alone the "Mission: Impossible" series.

This of course isn't the first time Klementieff has taken a supporting character and made it her own to the degree of stealing the movie from her co-stars; she famously burst onto the blockbuster scene as the character of Mantis in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2." That character, however, was written to be distinctly alien from the start, and given the character's name, it's not hard to see why Klementieff took her performance in a very entertainingly odd direction.

Paris, on the other hand, could've been simply another goon on the page. While her boss, the terrorist Gabriel (Esai Morales), is a stand out character by virtue of his dark ties to Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) as well as his taking orders from an all-powerful rogue AI known as The Entity, Paris only needed to be Gabriel's companion in mayhem. Fortunately, Klementieff took a unique approach to the character, drawing inspiration from — of all things — a weird corner of the avian kingdom.

Recently, /Film's Jeremy Mathai got to speak with Klementieff about developing the character of Paris. When he asked if she happened to come up with any particular backstory for the character, the actress revealed that she didn't use such a standard method:

"I don't really do these things, to be honest with you. I'm just more — I do my little Pom sauce [laughs]. No, but I worked on the feeling of lone wolf, cowboy vibe, rebel. I got inspired by weird videos of the bird, [the] shoebill stork. It's such a weird prehistoric bird. I was like, 'Oh my God, this is my character' [laughs]."

Indeed, when one looks at footage of the mighty, uncanny shoebill stork, it's easy to see how much character the bird has all by itself. It looks like a refugee from Jurassic Park, something you wouldn't want to see hanging out in a dark alley blocking your path. Which, not coincidentally, is exactly what Paris does to Ethan Hunt in "Dead Reckoning," in a moment that's as intimidating as that sounds.

While Klementieff uses the stork mostly for inspiring Paris' attitude and predatory movements, she also took some inspiration for the character's look from the bird, and she mentions in this interview for Rotten Tomatoes. Yet she didn't need to do much — as she told /Film, "I think I look like the bird a little bit," and for proof of that, look no further than this article's header image.

Although Klementieff has been acting in films and television since 2007, her star is only just now rising thanks to "Guardians" and "Mission: Impossible." As her performances as Mantis and Paris demonstrate, she's an actor with enormous individuality and potential. It's entirely possible that she could emerge as a new action heroine: "Dead Reckoning Part One" is the best showcase for her considerable skills in boxing and taekwondo since the "Black Mirror" episode "Striking Vipers" back in 2019.

What's been keeping her in supporting roles thus far is what could turn out to be her biggest strength: her idiosyncratic nature. She's undeniably a fantastic character actor, which both Mantis and Paris prove, and her process of using "weird videos" of birds bears that out. The "Pom sauce" she mentions is this unique quality, and in Paris' case, it allows her to join the pantheon of numerous quirky and (mostly) silent screen villains, including Oddjob (Harold Sakata), Jaws (Richard Kiel) and Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen) from the "James Bond" films, the Thin Man (Crispin Glover) from "Charlie's Angels," and Gogo Yubari (Chiaki Kuriyama) from "Kill Bill."

Though Paris' fate is uncertain after the events of "Dead Reckoning Part One," I hope that she's able to return in some capacity in "Part Two." Even if not, we can rest assured that we'll be seeing a lot of Klementieff on cinema screens in the future, and I for one am excited to see what she'll draw inspiration from next.