Pom Klementieff was born in Quebec City, Canada, to a Korean mother and French-Russian father, who was working there as a consul with the French government. Her parents chose the name "Pom" because it is similar in pronunciation to the Korean words for both "spring" (봄) and "tiger" (범). Klementieff lived in Canada for one year before her family traveled extensively due to her father\'s job. They lived in Japan and the Ivory Coast, before settling in France. Klementieff later said that travelling at an early age gave her a "gypsy soul".\n', '

Klementieff\'s father died of cancer when she was 5, and her mother had schizophrenia and was unable to care for children, so Klementieff was raised by her paternal uncle and aunt. Her uncle, whom she described as "like [her] second father", died on her 18th birthday. Klementieff briefly attended law school after her uncle\'s death to appease her aunt but did not find the career path appealing. She also worked as a waitress and saleswoman in France. She started acting at age 19 at the Cours Florent drama school in Paris. A few months into her education, she won a theater competition that awarded her free classes for two years with the school\'s top teachers.\n', '

Klementieff\'s first professional acting job was the French independent film Après lui (2007), portraying the stepdaughter of the protagonist played by Catherine Deneuve. Filming for her scenes took three days. During one scene, Klementieff was supposed to push someone down a set of stairs but accidentally fell down the stairs herself, and director Gaël Morel kept that shot in the final film. Her first leading role was in Loup (2009), a French film about a tribe of reindeer herders in the Siberian mountains. During filming, Klementieff stayed in a camp, hours from the nearest village, where temperatures dropped well below zero. During filming she befriended nomads who lived there, worked with real wolves, rode reindeer, and swam with a horse in a lake.\n', '

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