Romijn plays the shapeshifter in X-Men: The Last Stand, a role performed almost entirely in body paint and prosthetics with minimal dialogue. The characterisation is carried by movement and posture, and the performance had to survive a preparation process that was itself physically punishing.
She worked as a model internationally before acting and moved into television and film, where her franchise casting defined her public image for the better part of a decade. She has since built a substantial television career, including a lead role in a science fiction franchise series where she plays an officer with no prosthetics at all.
Recurring subjects: transformation, women whose bodies are the subject of the story, and physical performance carrying what dialogue does not. She plays predatory calm extremely well, and her later television work relies on a much drier comic register that the franchise casting never had any use for.
Her shapeshifter is among the most recognisable images in superhero cinema, and the makeup process behind it is frequently discussed as an example of what such roles demand physically. Her science fiction television lead has given her a second and quite different franchise audience.
For viewers who want a performance delivered under extreme physical constraint. Suited to anyone following the mutant franchise, and to those who should follow it with her science fiction television work, which uses her very differently.
