Twice-named one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People,” this supermodel-turned-actress worked hard to prove she was not just another pretty face, often taking on roles that required her to be goofy and engaging, not just good-looking.
Nearly six feet tall, blond Rebecca Romijn-Stamos was born and raised in Berkeley, California, the daughter of a Dutch custom furniture-maker and an American-born Dutch mother who taught English as a second language. In interviews, she insists that growing up in that "hippie environment" taught her and her sister not to care about their looks. Nevertheless, it was her stunning appearance that attracted the attention of modeling scouts and casting directors and allowed her to live the life she'd dreamed of. A poor student, Romijn-Stamos, was persuaded by a scout during a semester break from her freshman year at University of California at Santa Cruz to give modeling a try. The opportunity to travel and make money led her to move to Paris where she worked for the world's top fashion and glamour magazines for three years before moving back to the United States in 1995.
Within a couple of years of her move to New York City, Romijn-Stamos saw her television career take off when she was hired as the host of MTV's "House of Style", a position formerly held by fellow supermodel Cindy Crawford. It was here that audiences--and casting directors--first realized that this supermodel was also gifted with a winning, sometimes daffy, personality and impeccable comic timing. She built on that reputation in 1998 when she made her TV acting debut as David Schwimmer's messy girlfriend on the top-rated NBC sitcom "Friends". In the years that followed, this Sports Illustrated swimsuit model was offered dozens of film and TV roles, most of which expected her to just show up and look good--something she had grown tired of doing. Instead of trading on her looks, she opted to take on small, funny roles in movies like "Dirty Work" (1998, as a bearded lady), starring Norm Macdonald and "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me" (1999), opposite Mike Myers. She teamed with yet another "Saturday Night Live" alum, David Spade, to skewer her image playing a vapid supermodel who married Spade's Finch on the hit NBC sitcom "Just Shoot Me" in 1999. The next year, the model-actress ventured into more dramatic territory, taking on the role of the evil mutant Mystique in Bryan Singer's big-screen version of the comic book series "X-Men". The job required her to don blue body paint and scales, making her virtually unrecognizable to her fans. Singer was reportedly thrilled to have a model who was used to sitting in a makeup chair for hours play the part.
Romijn-Stamos began to graduate to higher-profile roles, but unfortunately they were routinely in dreadful films that focused largely on her physical assets and not her ability to deftly play light comedy. The sci-fi action remake "Rollerball" (2002) was a leaden disaster of near-epic proportions, in which she was saddled with an unattractive wig, a Russian accent and a clunky script-the movie got more notice for the actress' cut full frontal nude scene than anything else. She next appeared, to good effect, in the 2002 film "Simone," playing an actress who publicly doubles for the title character, a computer-generated actress that audiences believe is real-Romijn-Stamos' brief moments were effective but the film was never greater than the sum of its parts. Also in 2002 she landed her first starring role in Brian De Palma's erotic thriller "Femme Fatale," playing a sexy former con woman who is drawn into all manner of illicit intrigue in an attempt to stay on the straight and narrow. But De Palma's notoriously weak taste in material prevailed and the film was never on par with the quality of the camerawork or the spectacular beauty of the actress' scantily clad body.
Next up was a return engagement as Mystique in "X2: X-Men United" (2003), the superior sequel in which Romijn-Stamos' character received even more screen time (including a memorable scene in her own her blonde-haired, non-blue persona) yet remained as mysterious and elusive as her name implies (following the mega-success of the two films, Fox and Marvel were reportedly developing a potential spin-off "Mystique" film). Just days before the premiere of her next comic book film "The Punisher" (2004)—also with Marvel and producer Avi Arad—news broke that the actress had split with her husband Stamos. Despite the personal strife, the resultant media attention surrounding the actress in that film—in which she played a neighbor of the gun-toting superhero in one of her least convincing performances—and the sci-fi thriller "Godsend" (2004) which opened just weeks later—where she and Greg Kinnear play a couple who raise a clone of their dead child with unhappy results—catapulted her into the A-list ranks of in-demand celebrities, and promised an equally polarizing effect on her acting career.
After dropping Stamos from her name, Romijn revived Mystique for the third installment of the series, “X-Men: The Last Stand” (2006), directed by Brett Ratner. This time, the mutants face a peculiar choice after a cure for mutations is found: retain their uniqueness and remain isolated from society or give up their strange powers and become human. Returning to television, the actress got her first starring role in the one-hour drama, “Pepper Dennis” (WB, 2005-2006), playing a workaholic journalist whose life is thrown into chaos when her sister suffers an early mid-life crisis and moves in with her. To make matters worse, she loses her opportunity at the anchor chair thanks to the underhanded efforts of a former one-stand. The show debuted on the WB in April—not the best time of year to premier a new show. Meanwhile, a lame marketing effort that showcased Romijn’s stellar physique rather than her acting chops or the show’s strong writing doomed “Pepper Dennis” to a poor showing in the ratings right from the start. The show failed to make the slate on the newly-formed CW—the network formed after the merger of the WB and UPN.