Matthias Schoenaerts

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How can such a hot guy not have a thread???!!!!

Matthias Schoenaerts, born 8 December 1977) is a Belgian actor and graffiti artist. He made his film debut at the age of 15 in Daens (1992), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He is best known for his roles as Filip in Loft (2008), Jacky Vanmarsenille in Bullhead (2011), Ali in Rust and Bone (2012), Eric Deeds in The Drop (2014), Bruno von Falk in Suite Française (2015) and Gabriel Oak in Far from the Madding Crowd (2015). In 2013, he won the César Award for Most Promising Actor for Rust and Bone.

In 2015, he was named Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters in France.

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2015 Cannes Film Festival





matthias-schoenaerts.net

 

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#AMERICAN ACTOR
His father, Julian Schoenaerts, was a beloved actor in Belgium and was called “the Marlon Brando of Flanders.” Today it is impossible to read article on Matthias Schoenaerts that does not describe him as “the Belgian Brando.”
Thirty-seven years old, born and raised in Belgium, and fluent in English and French in addition to his native language, Matthias features in two films in competition in the 2015 Venice Film Festival. The Danish Girl is the much awaited biopic directed by Tom Hooper on the life of the first person to have undergone sexual reassignment, Einar Wegener (then Lili), husband of artist Gerda Wegener. The central pair of the movie, the extraordinry Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander, form a complex love triangle with Hans Axgil, Einar’s childhood friend, played by Schoenarts.

The other film, also eagerly anticipated, is A Bigger Splash by the Italian Luca Guadagnino. A remake of the French film La Piscine (with Alain Delon and Romy Schneider), A Bigger Splash is the story of a couple formed of Marianne (Tilda Swinton), a famous singer, and her filmmaker boyfriend Paul (Schoenaerts), whose usual holiday on the island of Pantelleria is upset by the arrival of an old friend, Harry (Ralph Fiennes), and his young daughter Penelope (Dakota Johnson).

Let’s find out who this “Belgian Brando” is and why he is considered one of the best actors of his generation.

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1) Family Trade
Born from the relationship (his parents were never married) between the Flemish actor Julien Schoenaerts and costume designer Dominique Wiche, Matthias grew up between Antwerp with his mother and Brussels with his grandmother.
However, Matthias mainly grew up alongside his deeply charismatic father, a beloved actor in his homeland who worked in both film and theatre. His two hour monologue performance of The Apology of Socrates (over 2,500 encores) was especially famous. This is what he told the actor Tom Hardy, who interviewed him for Interview, about his family’s fascination with the book: “Socrates was sent to court and was about to get the death sentence, so he decided to defend himself. Plato wrote a version of that defense. I think it’s one of the most beautiful manuscripts in the world. It’s not an intellectual masturbation type of thingy at all. It’s so simple. It’s just so clear. That is the beauty of it. When my dad discovered this text, he fell so in love with it, and in the course of 25 years he always went back to that text and reperformed it as a play.”

Matthias Schoenaerts with his father Julian

In 2014 a Belgian journalist Stan Lauryssens, published a controversial book on the figure of Julien, talking of a breakdown in 1970 and his recovery after he discovered that he suffered from bipolar disorder. The family responded with a lawsuit, and won, and accused the journalist of having reported numerous inaccuracies. The book was published anyway.
With such an influential father, Matthias found himself on set very young, and at 12 years old he made his debut in a small part beside his father in the film Daens. He attended a film school but was expelled for not attending. As a boy he preferred to paint, especially graffiti on the walls of Antwerp with the tag Zenith, and he even went to New York to collaborate with the Bronx group called Tats Cru. He also loved playing football, as a great fan of Barcelona, ​​but he gave up when he was just about to turn pro at 16. The fact was that there was nothing he wanted to do less than act: “Maybe that is part of growing up and definitely not wanting to do what your parents are doing. But I really didn’t want to have anything to do with it.” And yet, despite his reluctance, he completed his studies at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Antwerp and at 20 it was clear that – like his father before him – he would be an actor. As he told the Telegraph: “My father was very free-spirited and open-minded. He was like, “Let’s see where this kid ends up by nature. Let’s not try to navigate him into whatever we think might be good for him.” Which sounds like a beautiful concept…But then I ended up doing something I thought I never would.”

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2) European debuts
Matthias made his debut in the cinema at age 12 with a “wallpaper part,” as he calls it, in the film Daens, which featured his father as one of the protagonists. The film was nominated by Belgium for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1992.

Daens

In his teens he distanced himself from the world of acting, as we have seen, but from 2001 onwards he took part in numerous films and television shows in Belgium.
Notable examples include a small part in Paul Veroheven’s Black Book (2006) and especially the incredible success of Loft (2008), which became the most successful Flemish film ever at the box office. Schoenaerts would go on to play the same role in the American remake of the film in 2015.

Bullhead

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cont.

His real breakthrough, however, came in 2012, with the role of the cattle farmer on steroids embroiled in a shady deal because of an unscrupulous veterinarian in Bullhead. For the film, for which literally Schoenaerts carried a lot of weight on his shoulders, gaining 60 pounds (about 30 kilograms) with a“very specific unhealthy diet” that included “3,000 tins of tuna, several hundred chickens, and plenty of oats, rice and pasta combined with an exhausting iron-pumping workout regimen.” As every distorted and massacred body usually leads to the Oscars, Bullhead was duly nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film and Matthias found himself in the spotlight over the world.

Rust and Bone

The other film that would make him famous also required him to put back all those pounds he had lost in in the meantime after Bullhead, namely the wonderful Rust and Bone, starring Marion Cotillard and directed by Jacques Audiard. The film was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award, two Golden Globes, two Baftas and 9 Cesars. Matthias Schoenaerts was the first Belgian actor to win an Cesar, i.e. a French Oscar, in this case as Most Promising Actor.

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3) International success
This period was followed by a series of American productions or international co-productions that launched Matthias worldwide. In 2013 he shot Blood Ties, directed by Guillame Canet, once again with Cotillard, as well as Clive Owen, Mila Kunis and James Caan.
This was followed by The Drop in 2014, with Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace, and the remake of The Loft in 2015.

Suite Francaise

In 2015 he then starred in three costume dramas: Suite Francaise, based on the novel by Irene Nemirovsky, where he plays a Nazi soldier in love with Michelle Williams; A Little Chaos with Kate Winslet, the second feature directed by Alan Rickman, in which he plays the landscaper of Versailles, Andre Le Notre; Far from the Madding Crowd, the British literary classic by Thomas Hardy, where he acted alongside Carey Mulligan.

Far from the Madding Crowd

Again in 2015 there was Disorder (original title: Maryland), presented at Cannes, where he is a former soldier who suffers from PTSD and is charged with the task of surveilling the wife of a Lebanese industrialist (Diane Kruger) but ends up falling in love with her.

Disorder

A Bigger Splash and The Danish Girl will be presented at Venice 2015, while next year it seems that HBO has given the green light to the mini series Lewis and Clarke. Produced by Brad Pitt and Tom Hanks, and co-starring Casey Affleck, the series is inspired by the book “Undaunted Courage” by Stephen E. Ambrose and tells the story of journey taken by the explorers Lewis and Clark along the Missouri River.

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4) First love
Matthias is still attached to art and painting, although, as he told the Telegraph, “if I consider people like Francis Bacon, I wouldn’t dare to call myself a painter.” But he still paints and has recently rented a studio in Antwerp, where he still lives.

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5) A single man

After ending a long-term relationship with Alexandra Schouteden (they would live together in his hometown), Matthias Schoenaerts, is currently single, as he revealed to both the French and Belgian Press in April. Interviewed by Pure People he said one of the hardest things of splitting on Alexandra was the fact he had to leave also…his cats, that he’s just adopted with his ex girlfriend.

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Model Carolyn Murphy escapes to the storied Il Pellicano with actor Matthias Schoenaerts, in a graphic black-and-white wardrobe as dramatic as the Tuscan coast.



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'A Bigger Splash' Photocall - 72nd Venice Film Festival



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'The Danish Girl' Premiere - 72nd Venice Film Festival



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'A Bigger Splash' Premiere - 72nd Venice Film Festival



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'The Danish Girl' Photocall - 72nd Venice Film Festival



'The Sea Of Trees' Premiere - The 68th Annual Cannes Film Festival



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Kering Talks Women In Motion At The 68th Annual Cannes Film Festival



'Far From The Madding Crowd' New York Special Screening



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'Far From The Madding Crowd' World Premiere - Red Carpet Arrivals



'Suite Francais' Screening in London



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"The Drop" Press Conference - 2014 Toronto International Film Festival



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"The Drop" After Party - 2014 Toronto International Film Festival



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USA Today



matthias-schoenaerts.net

 

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Premiere magazine



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2015 Cannes Film Festival - Vogue (France)



2015 Cannes Film Festival - Le Monde



2015 CANNES FILM FESTIVAL - LIBÉRATION (FRANCE)



Vogue



2015 Cannes Film Festival - Paris Match



matthias-schoenaerts.net

 

[SallyAlbright]

He was so great (and hot) with Carey in Far From the Madding Crowd.

 

[jexxica]

Esquire (UK) - January/February 2016

starity.hu

 

[Wolkfolk]

He's soooo damn hot ! Can't wait to see him in Lewis & Clark with Casey Affleck.

 

[tiffany]

Great editorial!