Halina Reijn
Halina Reijn is a Dutch filmmaker, writer and former actress.
Early life and education
Halina Reijn was born on 10 November 1975 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, to Fleur ten Kate and Frank Volkert Reijn. 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 with her family in the tiny village of Wildervank, Groningen located in the north of the Netherlands. The place attracted many artists, Reijn described it as a "pleasant community". 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 took her to 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 despite being only ten years old.
When she was ten years old, and a year after her parents had amicably separated, her father died suddenly from suffocation caused by an undiagnosed pulmonary embolism. Following her father's death, Reijn and her remaining immediate family stayed "very close" and they moved to a newly-built neighborhood of Groningen in order to escape the isolation. Reijn was able to continue her theater lessons, and her mother, like a "soccer mom", would bring her everywhere to auditions; Reijn had strong desire to become a child star. From age eleven onwards, under the tutelage of Josja Hamann, she attended the Vooropleiding Theater in Groningen, a selective youth academy where they were giving lessons and had to rehearse every midday. She stayed eight years at the academy. She also attended a VWO school in Groningen. Upon receiving her diploma, she applied at theater schools in Maastricht, Arnhem, and Amsterdam, with the Sonia Moore Studio of the Theatre in New York as a back-up. With the latter, she had spent a year in New York and passed an audition. She ultimately chose the Maastricht Academy of Dramatic Arts.
Career
1994–1999: Early television and theater work
Throughout her teenage years, she had her earliest acting gigs in various minor roles on the small screen, and a bigger role in ', a thirteen-part comedy series on the Veronica channel, that ran for a single season. The latter one was meant as a backbone for her entrance exam into theatre school. 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, two years before her final exams, she was allowed to leave with an honorable mention. She was asked to join the ensemble at the where she was offered the role of Ophelia in Hamlet, Subsequently,, 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 was awarded the prestigious Dutch theater prize, the Colombina, for "Best Supporting Actress" in 1998. She also had parts in The Cherry Orchard, The Last Ones, Jeff Koons and Adel Blank; the latter was a co-production with.She also appeared 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 adaptation 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 ', 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.
2000-2003: Toneelgroep Amsterdam and first film roles
Reijn made her big screen acting debut in De Omweg, a semi-autobiographical drama directed and written by Frouke Fokkema. It opened in Dutch theaters on 7 November 2000 to little fanfare. 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. The movie premiered at the 2001 Toronto International Film Festival, just before the September 11 attacks. 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. And lastly she appeared in the VARA TV Movie Herschreven vriendschap.In 2002, Reijn featured in four projects. First she played a minor part in Frank Van Passel's Villa des Roses, her first role in an English/French language international co-production, based on the novel of the same name by Willem Elsschot. Her next two projects were on television with the short TV drama De afrekening and the TV Movie Ware Liefde. She also had a minor role in Moonlight, Paula van der Oest's follow-up movie. Meanwhile, back on stage she performed her first role for Toneelgroep Amsterdam, with Ivo van Hove as director she took on the role of courtesan Poppea in Con Amore. At the time, while she was still connected with De Trust, she got 'loaned out' to TGA. For De Theatercompagnie she returned to the role of Ophelia in Hamlet, a character she played previously, for a new rendition of the Shakespearean classic.
In 2003, she joined the ensemble at Toneelgroep Amsterdam, under the direction of future long-time collaborator Ivo van Hove. Around that time she also completed her final performance for De Theatercompagnie, with a new production of The Seagull, where she played Nina. In her first year, with the Toneelgroep Amsterdam, she starred in two plays: She played Irina in the Three Sisters, based upon the play of Anton Chekhov of the same name, and Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra, a co-production with the Toneelschuur, for the latter performance, in which she played Lavinia, she was nominated for a Theo d'Or for "Best Female Actress" in 2004. On television she starred in two telefilms, she played Ewouds's girlfriend in Boy Ecury and Hostess Patty in Het wonder van Máxima, they were aired on public television on 2 and 9 April respectively.
Reijn had three big screen releases in 2003. Her first appearance was as Polleke's mother, Tina, in the family film Polleke, a film adaption of Guus Kuijer's children's book. At first, she was bewildered why she approached by director Ineke Houtman for the role of Polleke's mother, at the time she viewed herself too young to play a mother, but later accepted the role when delving into the character's story. It was the opening film of the Cinekid festival on 11 October. Her next feature film was with director-writer Alex van Warmerdam, called Grimm, in which she had the female leading role. The story is loosely based on Grimm Brothers's Brother and Sister, in which a brother and sister are abandoned by their father in a forest; in a note their mother urges them to go to Spain to meet up with their uncle. The movie was first shown at SSIF, before released nationwide in the Dutch theaters in early December. Compared to the directors earlier work, Grimm was a critical and financial disappointment. Dissatisfied with the original cut, director Alex van Warmerdam together with editor Job ter Burg went back to the original and reworked the entire film. The new cut premiered at 2019's Netherlands Film Festival. Reijn then starred in Maarten Treurniet's directorial debut Father's Affair, where she played Ellen, the girlfriend of Peter Paul Muller's character and best friend of his deceased wife, who is notified by his GP that he is infertile, which leads to a desperate search for the biological father of his fourteen-year-old son. For her performance as Ellen, Reijn was nominated for best actress at the Golden Calves. In March 2004, both Polleke and Father's Affair, were awarded the Golden Film by the Netherlands Film Festival for having sold 100,000 tickets at the box office.