Xenia Sergeyevna Onatopp is a character in the James Bond film GoldenEye, played by actress Famke Janssen.

Famke Janssen as Xenia Onatopp.

Biography: Her sadistic sexual proclivities, coupled with her overall lack of conscience, would seem to qualify her as a psychopath. Onatopp, born in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, was a fighter pilot in the Soviet Air Force. After the collapse of the USSR, she joins the crime syndicate Janus, led by renegade MI6 agent Alec Trevelyan. Early in the film, Bond gets into a car chase with her, meets her at a casino, and places her under surveillance.

Her main characteristic is that she apparently gets sexual satisfaction through killing. In a memorable scene, she lures a Canadian admiral onto his yacht moored off Monte Carlo. While the two are having sex, she suddenly wraps her legs around him and crushes his chest between her thighs, achieving an orgasm while killing him. Afterwards, she steals the admiral’s ID, enabling her and an unidentified Janus operative to steal a prototype of the Eurocopter Tiger, which is scheduled for a high-profile test flight the following day.

Later, she and turncoat Russian General Arkady Ourumov use the hijacked Tiger in an attack on the Severnaya satellite control centre in central Siberia, where they steal the controller for the GoldenEye electromagnetic pulse (EMP) satellite weapon. During the attack, she fires an AKSU-74 carbine/sub-machine gun around the control room, murdering all the military personnel and technicians present, again getting sexually aroused in the process.

She encounters Bond two more times during the film, attempting to crush him between her thighs on both occasions. The first time, she comes on to him in a Sauna, attempting to lower his guard before catching him in the deathly grip of her bare thighs. Clad in only a bathrobe, she initially kisses him, before being forced against a wall. She retaliates, kicking him, and they roll around together, before she pins him down by his waist, sitting in his lap and wrapping her long legs around him, choking him with her thighs and hands, which are around his neck, eventually reaching an orgasm. Bond has enough, and begins slamming her into walls, but not before she breaks a bone or two. Bond survives her sexually aggressive assault and forces her to lead him to Janus. The second time is after he and Natalya Simonova, the only innocent survivor of the Severnaya attack, enter Cuba to stop Trevelyan.

Famke Janssen as Xenia Onatopp in ‘GoldenEye’.

Onatopp rappels from a helicopter onto Bond, who is just waking up, and quickly gains the upper hand in their battle. She gets Bond into position to crush his chest; just as Bond is ready to pass out from the pressure, he connects the rope she rappelled down to her safety harness, grabs her AK-74 rifle that was slung across her back and kills the helicopter’s pilot by shooting into the helicopter’s cockpit from the ground. The chopper veers away, pulling Onatopp off Bond and trapping her in the fork of a tree, with her chest being crushed by her safety harness. She dies just before the chopper crashes. After Onatopp’s death, Bond tells Natalya that “She always did enjoy a good squeeze.” She is only the second woman ever killed by Bond, the first being Naomi, Karl Stromberg’s helicopter pilot, in The Spy Who Loved Me.

After her portrayal by Famke Janssen, Xenia was voted the 2nd most memorable Bond Girl, only narrowly beaten by Ursula Andress’s legendary performance as Honey Ryder. Xenia is the first character in the ‘true’ continuity (Which does not include the old Casino Royale and Never Say Never Again) to have sex on-screen, during her lovemaking with the admiral. She’s also the first to have an orgasm.

See also:

• Bond girls
• Bond henchmen