Why Susan From The Blacklist Looks So Familiar

NBC has launched numerous spinoff shows over the years, many of which are associated with the Chicago and Law & Order franchises, but they recently attempted to branch off The Blacklist series as well—and Famke Janssen was the perfect person to lead the new project. She made her debut as Susan Hargrave, the head of Halcyon Aegis' Grey Matters arm, in the third season of The Blacklist before later taking command of The Blacklist: Redemption. We wouldn't be surprised if she looks familiar to you; she's appeared in lots of movies and TV shows over the years. Here's where you may recognize her from.

Years before Janssen broke into Hollywood, she was a professional model. She modeled throughout the '80s but started to wind down her career in the early '90s, hoping to make the jump onto the silver screen.

Her first role ever was guest-starring as Kamala in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Perfect Mate." Later that year she appeared alongside Jeff Goldblum in Paul Mones' crime drama Fathers & Sons. From then on, she took on as many guest-starring and small roles on television and in cinema as she could take.

Janssen has appeared in a whopping 43 movies since her start in 1992, such as The Faculty, I Spy, and Down the Shore, and it doesn't look like she plans on stopping anytime soon. In fact, on top of all that, she has also taken on roles in shows such as Melrose Place, Ally McBeal, and Puppy Love.

A few years after breaking into Hollywood, Janssen got her big break playing Xenia Onatopp, a Soviet Air Force pilot, in Martin Campbell's GoldeneEye in 1995. It was also Pierce Brosnan's first time suiting up as the iconic MI6 officer James Bond.

Janssen wasn't just a Bond Girl; she was a classic femme fatale. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Onatopp joined the international crime organization Janus, which was led by the former MI6 officer Alec Trevelyan (Sean Bean). Critics praised the film for modernizing the franchise by making it "high-tech, action-packed, and urbane." And while Brosnan proved himself as a worthy successor to the Bond title, it was Janssen's Onatopp that raised audiences' eyebrows. She consistently ranks among the best Bond Girls in the franchise. That's no easy feat.

The number of offers Janssen got skyrocketed after her appearance in GoldenEye, but her biggest movie post-Bond Girl has to be William Malone's House on Haunted Hill in 1999. The horror flick was a remake of the 1959 film of the same name, written by Robb White, and starring the iconic Vincent Price.

In the original, Price and Carol Ohmart play the rich Loren couple that invites guests to the house for a chance to win $10,000 (which inflated to $1 million for the remake). In the remake, Geoffery Rush and Janssen take over as the eccentric couple, who are named Price (after the actor). Unfortunately, despite a well-rounded cast, the movie didn't score well with critics. They lambasted the movie, calling it "unsophisticated and unoriginal" that fails to "produce scares." That didn't stop people from seeing it, though.

Janssen has appeared in dozens of movies throughout her career, but she will always be remembered as Jean Grey from 20th Century Fox's X-Men franchise. She made her debut as the red-haired mutant in Bryan Singer's X-Men (2000), then again in Singer's X2: X-Men United (2003) and Brett Ratner's X-Men: The Last Stand (2006).

It was in the final moments of X2 that she turned into the Phoenix—or, more accurately, the Dark Phoenix. She became the villain in the third and final installment in the original X-Men trilogy. Considering that she also dies in that movie, many people thought we would never see her again, and we didn't—at least not in that timeline.

Thanks to time travel, Janssen was able to return for a cameo at the end of Singer's X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), showing that she never became the Dark Phoenix in the new timeline. Janssen also made a brief appearance in The Wolverine (2013), but only as a figment of Logan's (Hugh Jackman) imagination.

A year after X2: X-Men United hit theaters, Janssen landed a recurring role in the second season of FX's medical drama Nip/Tuck. She made her debut as life coach Ava Moore in the third episode of the season, "Manya Mabika," in which she convinced Julian McMahon's Dr. Christian Troy to resolve his issues with Joely Richardson's Julia McNamara.

Janssen's arc on Nip/Tuck would have been disappointing if it ended there, but it didn't. She was, for all intents and purposes, the primary antagonist of the season. Her stint on the series involved antagonism, manipulation, and seduction. While that's extreme in and of itself, her story is all the more interesting when audiences discover she's a transsexual.

She used to be a homosexual male, but thanks to reconstructive surgery, she is now considered "the Hope Diamond of Transsexuals; completely flawless in every way," according to Christian. Being a transsexual plays an integral part of her arc, which unfolds across multiple seasons.

Aside from the X-Men movies, one of Janssen's biggest hits on the silver screen is John Polson's psychological thriller Hide and Seek. She plays Dr. Katherine Carson, a family friend of Robert DeNiro's Dr. David Callaway and his daughter Emily Callaway, played by Dakota Fanning.

The movie begins with David and Emily moving to upstate New York after discovering that his wife died of an apparent suicide (which we later learn was actually murder). Janssen only appears in a few points in the movie, particularly at the end, but her role in the story is crucial to its conclusion.

In the end, David dies shortly after learning that he has a split personality and that his other personality, Charlie, killed his wife. So, Emily goes and lives with Katherine, but that's if we're going by one of the movie's five endings. Although critics weren't impressed with the film, it was a box office success, earning almost five times its production budget.

Twentieth Century Fox likely didn't want to let go of Janssen following the original X-Men trilogy's conclusion, so they cast her as Lenore "Lenny" Mills in their Taken series. She played the wife of Liam Neeson's Bryan Mills, whose daughter is taken captive in the first movie (2008). That's when Neeson uses his particular set of skills to track down and kill the captors, and that's also what sets the foundation for the sequel, Taken 2 (2012).

Janssen reprised her role as Lenny in the movie, but instead of worrying about her daughter from afar, this time, she was taken. The actress returned for the final time in Taken 3 (2015), in which her character's murder sets in motion the events of the film. What's interesting is that Janssen has been a part of two major trilogies now, and her character has died in the third installment of each one.

In-between Taken installments, and shortly before taking up residence in Hemlock Grove, Pennsylvania, Janssen starred in Tommy Wirkola's Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, a re-imagining of the classic fairy tale.

In the dark fantasy flick, Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton play the eponymous siblings. In this story, though, they have already fought and defeated the witch in the gingerbread house and have since grown up to become witch hunters. Their next target: Muriel (Janssen), an evil grand witch who has been terrorizing the German town of Augsburg. Considering that Muriel dies in the movie, we don't expect to see Janssen return for the sequel. Then again, she played a witch in a fantasy movie, and witches have the tendency of coming back to life.

After spending some time on the big screen, in movies such as the aforementioned Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, Janssen returned to television in a big way. She took up a leading role in Netflix's horror series Hemlock Grove, based on the novel of the same name by Brian McGreevy, playing Olivia Godfrey, the head of the sinister Godfrey Institute for Biomedical Technologies.

Her deceased husband's brother, Dr. Norman Godfrey (Dougray Scott), ran the town's other medical organization, Hemlock Acres Hospital. The series, along with Arrested Development and House of Cards, broke industry barriers in 2013. That year, the streaming service garnered its first Emmy nominations, a first for an online series. Unfortunately, the show didn't jive well with critics, and it ended up running for only three seasons.

Janssen appears to be winding down her film career and transitioning to television full-time. She is currently leading The Blacklist's spinoff, The Blacklist: Redemption, but before she landed the main role on the NBC drama, Janssen recurred in the second season of ABC's How to Get Away with Murder.

Janssen played death row attorney Eve Rothlo, whose past is intertwined with the titular Annalise Keating (Viola Davis). They used to be romantically involved when they were both attending Harvard Law, until Annalise decided to leave Eve to be with her therapist, Sam Keating.

As with everyone else in Annalise's life, though, Eve never could escape her grasp. Now and then she would find herself tangled in whatever wicked activities (or trials) Annalise was a part of. Janssen relegated to guest star for the third season, but still appeared in a handful of episodes.