Mylène Jampanoï

Mylène Jampanoï, born Lena Jam‑Panoï on 12 July 1980 in Aix‑en‑Provence, France, is a versatile French actress, model and visual artist whose career spans over two decades. The daughter of a Chinese father who emigrated from Vietnam and a French‑Breton mother, she was raised in a modest household after her father left when she was three; her mother worked as a cashier while battling severe depression. Despite these hardships, she earned a scientific baccalauréat at seventeen and pursued a bold move to Paris, where she was mentored by an older attorney before deciding to follow her passion for acting and modeling. After early television work on the series Sous le soleil, she appeared in minor film roles such as Crimson Rivers II: Angels of the Apocalypse (2004) and 36th Precinct (2004) before landing her first leading role in the independent drama The Chinese Botanist's Daughters (2006), a part that required her to learn Chinese phonetically. In 2007 she became the face of Dior Snow cosmetics in Asia, a campaign that took her to Japan and South Korea and earned her a cover on Asian Elle. International recognition arrived with her haunting performance in Pascal Laugier’s controversial horror film Martyrs (2008), a role she described as emotionally exhausting due to its extreme violence. The same year she lent her voice to the animated hit Kung Fu Panda as Maître Vipère. She continued to diversify her portfolio with a supporting role in Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter (2010) and portrayed the iconic actress Bambou in Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life (2010). Subsequent projects include the Canadian drama Laurence Anyways (2012), the Netflix biopic Madame Claude (2021), and the comedy Made in China (2019). Beyond the screen, Jampanoï is an accomplished painter; her works were exhibited at Paris’s Galerie Sobering in 2022 as part of the show Athènes n’est pas en Grèce. Her personal life saw a marriage to Indian supermodel Milind Soman in 2006, a divorce in 2009, and the birth of her son Andrèas Vassily with Greek producer Dimitri Stephanides in 2014. A Roman Catholic who publicly supports same‑sex marriage, she continues to balance acting, modeling, and visual art, cementing her status as a multifaceted talent in contemporary French culture.