Halina Reijn

Halina Reijn (born 10 November 1975) is a Dutch actress, writer and film director.

Halina Reijn was born on 10 November 1975 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, to Fleur ten Kate and Frank Volkert Reijn (1931-1986).

Reijn's parents were both artists.

She is the middle child of three daughters, with an older sister named Leonora and a younger named Esther.

Her father was gay despite being in a heterosexual marriage with her mother.

Reijn grew up in an anthroposophy household, and her parents were followers of the Subud spiritual movement.

In her early years, she grew up in a "Pippi Longstocking" house with her family in the tiny village of Wildervank, Groningen, which attracted many artists.

They lived without television and never visited the cinema, instead they played music, drew and painted; her father built a theater room with a podium and flats for her.

Reijn developed an interest in acting when her babysitter brought her along for a showing of Annie, a film adaptation of the Broadway musical, at a local theater when she was six.

She stated, "When I saw Annie, I thought, I want that too. I was very jealous of her."

With help of her mother, she joined a youth theater in Veendam.

Reijn found it inadequate and thought the other children did not take it seriously enough, which led her mother to pursue an audition with the theater collective De Voorziening (precursor to the Noord Nederlands Toneel) despite her young age.

When she was ten years old, and a year after her parents had amicably separated, her father died suddenly from suffocation caused by undiagnosed pulmonary embolism.

Following her father's death, the family moved to a newly built neighborhood of Groningen in order to escape the isolation.

From age eleven onwards under the guidance of Josja Hamann, she would spend her teenage years at the Vooropleiding Theater in Groningen, which was a grueling youth academy with a highly selective group, where they were giving lessons and had to rehearse every midday.

The movie was nominated for Academy Award for Best International Feature Film at the 75th Academy Awards, even though it received mixed reviews.

She also starred in her second short, Flicka, as the title role, in which she played a computer programme who is in relationship with a lonely building supervisor, it was produced as part of NTR Kort!.

Halina Reijn was professionally trained at the Maastricht Academy of Dramatic Arts, where she graduated in 1998.

In the middle of her second year in Maastricht, she was asked to join the ensemble at the De Trust where she was offered the role of Ophelia in Hamlet, Subsequently, Theu Boermans, the artistic director, offered her a permanent place at the collective.

Among her other performances for De Trust, her portrayal of Lulu in Shopping and Fucking she received the prestigious Dutch theater prize, the Colombina, as "Best Supporting Actress" in 1998.

She also had parts in The Cherry Orchard, De laatsten, Koons and Adel Blank, the latter one was a co-production with De Mexicaanse Hond.

Throughout her student years, she had various minor roles on the small screen, and a lead role in Pril geluk, a thirteen-part comedy series on the Veronica channel, that ran for a single season.

She also had a role in a short called ''Temper!

Temper!'' written and directed by Frank Lammers, which was part of Kort Rotterdams, a five-part series highlighting common elements of Rotterdam's society.

In 1998, Reijn branched out into film, with the adaption of the Jan Wolkers's short story De wet op het kleinbedrijf, where she had a principal role in the television film.

The following year she starred in her first in telefilm, an initiative started by the NPO in 1998 to produce films for public television, De Trein van zes uur tien, a Dutch thriller directed by Frank Ketelaar that was broadcast by AVRO.

It was part of the 2000s Cologne Conference, where it was selected among the ten programmes at the TopTen section of the festival.

That same year she played a bit part as a sex worker in Martin Koolhoven's breakout film, Suzy Q, which featured Reijn's lifelong friend Carice van Houten in the title role.

Despite its warm critical reception and launching the careers of the people involved, the movie was never released on home video, in theaters or shown outside its home country due to music license issues with artists like The Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix among others.

Reijn made her big screen acting debut in De Omweg (also known as "The Detour"), a semi-autobiographical drama directed and written by Frouke Fokkema.

It opened in Dutch theaters on 7 November 2000.

On 1 January 2001, 3 years after Reijn joined, De Trust would fuse with another theater company named Art & Pro, they would continue under the new name of de Theatercompagnie.

The fusion, however, did not prove fruitful in the long term, the newly formed company was steeped in financial difficulties, infighting between the co-founders, overworked actors and in the later years there would be conflict with the government over subsidies.

Further that year, she would star in Nanouk Leopold's directorial debut, tragicomedy Îles flottantes, it follows the dysfunctional lives of three friends who all recently turned thirty.

The low budget film was part of No More Heroes, an initiative started in order to produce films from upcoming Dutch filmmakers.

The film was selected for and first premiered at the 2001's International Film Festival Rotterdam, where it was nominated for the Tiger Award.

Between her two film releases in 2001, she also participated in De acteurs, a seven part weekly series where fourteen young actors were interviewed and paired up with each other to rehearse scenes from a miniseries created by Kim van Kooten.

that same year, Reijn gained further notoriety with her role in the tragicomedy, Zus & Zo, alongside De Trust peers, which was written and directed by Paula van der Oest.

The movie revolves around three sisters trying to stop their gay brother from marrying a woman and in doing so securing the family's seaside estate for his own.

Reijn played the unsuspecting fiancée.