Who is Jean Grey? From Famke Janssen to Sadie Sink, meet the actresses who have played the X-Men icon across multiple films and timelines

Famke Janssen returns as Jean Grey in X2: X-Men United, as the X-Men come under attack from Colonel William Stryker, an anti-mutant military specialist who targets Xavier’s school and captures Professor X. This time around, Jean’s abilities take centre stage, revealing a level of power far beyond what audiences saw in X-Men.

Her telepathy and telekinesis are no longer simply useful tools; she wields them with considerably greater force, especially to protect those she holds dear. Her powers come to the fore in the film’s climax, when she uses her telekinesis to hold back a rushing wall of water at Alkali Lake, allowing the others to escape. Jean is seemingly killed in the process, but the film’s final image—a Phoenix-shaped form beneath the water—suggests her story is far from over.

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In X-Men: The Last Stand, Famke Janssen’s Jean Grey is revealed to have survived the events of X2: X-Men United. But she is no longer the controlled, compassionate X-Man audiences met in the first two films. As a child, Jean’s immense psychic abilities had been suppressed by Professor X, who feared that she would be unable to control them and could hurt herself or those around her. Her apparent death at Alkali Lake and later resurrection ultimately frees that power and splits her psyche, awakening her darker persona: the Phoenix.

With her abilities now fully unleashed, Jean struggles to control the destructive force within her. She kills Scott Summers, joins Magneto and the Brotherhood of Mutants, and eventually turns against Professor X, killing him during a confrontation at her childhood home. During the film’s climactic battle on Alcatraz Island, Jean loses control completely, disintegrating the soldiers and mutants around her. Only Wolverine’s regenerative abilities allow him to withstand her powers long enough to reach her. Recognising that she can no longer control the Phoenix, Jean begs Logan to kill her—and he does, ending Famke Janssen’s original-timeline portrayal of Jean Grey on a tragic note.

Famke Janssen’s Jean Grey makes a brief but significant cameo in X-Men: Days of Future Past. After Wolverine travels back to 1973 and succeeds in changing future events, Logan awakens in a new, altered timeline where the X-Men’s fate has been rewritten. Among those who are alive in this future is Jean, who is seen alongside Scott Summers at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters.

The cameo effectively rewrites the tragic ending of Janssen’s original Jean Grey arc. In the timeline audiences saw in the original trilogy, Jean dies at Wolverine’s hands in X-Men: The Last Stand. But after the events of Days of Future Past, she is alive again, as are Scott and Professor X. Janssen’s brief appearance therefore serves as a bittersweet second chance for the original X-Men—and a fitting final glimpse of her Jean before the franchise moves into its younger cast and a new timeline.

X-Men: Days of Future Past not only rewrites the original timeline, but it also results in a split timeline. X-Men Apocalypse follows the events in the altered timeline, with the younger versions of Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy), Magneto (Michael Fassbender), Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), Beast (Nicholas Hoult), Quicksilver (Evan Peters) and Havok (Lucas Till), alongside new additions including Storm (Alexandra Shipp), Cyclops (Tye Sheridan) and Jean Grey, played by Game of Thrones’s Sophie Turner.

Turner’s Jean is a younger, more vulnerable version of the character than the one portrayed by Famke Janssen. A student at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, Jean possesses powerful telepathic and telekinetic abilities but struggles to understand and control their full extent. Her fear of what she might become echoes the suppressed power of Janssen’s Jean, while Apocalypse begins to reveal the extraordinary force that lies within her.

Whether Jean actually becomes the Phoenix in X-Men: Apocalypse remains open to interpretation, but the film certainly foreshadows the transformation. When she unleashes the full extent of her psychic abilities to defeat Apocalypse, her power manifests as a fiery, phoenix-like aura around her—an unmistakable visual cue to the character’s comic-book alter ego.

In X-Men: Dark Phoenix, the direct sequel to X-Men: Apocalypse, Sophie Turner’s Jean Grey drives the story as the X-Men face one of their most dangerous threats yet: Jean herself. During a space rescue mission, Jean absorbs a mysterious cosmic force, dramatically amplifying her already formidable psychic abilities, but also making them increasingly difficult to control.

As Jean struggles with her newfound power, she learns the truth about the accident she believed killed her parents, sending her into a spiral of anger and grief. When the alien shapeshifter Vuk (Jessica Chastain) attempts to manipulate Jean and harness the Phoenix Force, Jean instead embraces her power and uses it to destroy Vuk, appearing to die in the process. But a closing voiceover reveals she has not died but evolved beyond humanity—leaving her fate, unlike Janssen’s, deliberately open.

In the blockbuster hit Spider-Man: Brand New Day, fans meet the latest Jean Grey. Played by Stranger Things’s Sadie Sink, the MCU reimagines her origin story, introducing her as a lone character instead of part of the larger team of the X-Men. This is a Jean Grey that has yet to meet Professor X.

After witnessing her sister—a fellow telepath and the only family she has—get abducted by the Department of Damage Control (DODC), Jean Grey goes on a telepathic rampage to try to rescue her. This puts her at odds with your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man (Tom Holland) and, for most of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, she serves as the film’s main antagonist. When the DODC attempts to harness her powers, a traumatic discovery unlocks a surge in her powers. Only Peter Parker is able to break through, letting her into his mind, where a memory of Aunt May finally reaches her.

Sadie Sink’s performance is a tour de force, painting a portrait of what happens when overwhelming fury meets unprecedented telepathic powers. Her transformation from misunderstood villain to potential superhero sets the stage for what could be her true introduction to the X-Men and what’s next for the MCU, as the film shows her boarding a bus upstate—likely bound for Westchester and a certain professor's school for gifted youngsters.

From Famke Janssen’s tragic Phoenix to Sophie Turner’s cosmic rebirth and Sadie Sink’s troubled introduction to the MCU, Jean Grey has undergone some of the most dramatic transformations in the X-Men franchise. Each actress has brought a different side of the character to the screen, reflecting the timelines and stories around her. With Sink’s Jean only beginning her journey in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, this latest incarnation could be the one that finally brings the iconic mutant into the MCU’s X-Men era.

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