Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts started his acting career at the age of 13 in the film Daens (1992), which received an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.
He gained recognition for his performances as Filip in Loft (2008), Jacky Vanmarsenille in the Oscar-nominated Bullhead (2011), and Ali in the BAFTA and Golden Globe-nominated Rust and Bone (2012), which earned him the César Award for Most Promising Actor.
Early Life
Matthias Schoenaerts hails from Antwerp, a city in the Dutch-speaking region of Belgium known as Flanders. His parents are actor Julien Schoenaerts (1925–2006) and Dominique Wiche (1953–2016), who worked as a costume designer, translator, and French instructor.
His father is of Flemish descent, however, his maternal grandmother is from Liège, Wallonia, the French-speaking part of Belgium. For the first six years of his life, Schoenaerts lived in Brussels with his maternal grandparents. He also has a half-brother named Bruno Schoenaerts (born 1953), who is a lawyer.
At the age of nine in 1987, he starred in a stage adaptation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince alongside his father, who also served as the director. His mother, Dominique, designed the play’s costumes.
As a teenager, he began creating graffiti under the name “Zenith” and later traveled to New York to team up with the Bronx-based collective TATS CRU.
At the age of 16, Matthias Schoenaerts abandoned his pursuit of becoming a professional soccer player, despite being on the roster for Belgium’s Beerschot AC. In 2013, he revealed his admiration for the Spanish team FC Barcelona.
Matthias Schoenaerts Career
Matthias Schoenaerts, who was 13 years old at the time, had his first film appearance in the 1992 Belgian movie Daens. The film was recognized with an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.
Despite his father also being part of the cast, they did not have any scenes together. In 2003, Schoenaerts was selected as one of the “Europe’s Shooting Stars” by the European Film Promotion.
Following his graduation from The Academy of Dramatic Arts in Antwerp, he appeared in various short films and full-length features. One of his notable roles was in Dorothée Van Den Berghe’s Meisje (Girl) in 2002.
He also played the character of Raven, a hippie living in 1970s Amsterdam, in Van Den Berghe’s My Queen Karo in 2009. In 2010, he took on the lead role in Alex Stockman’s techno-thriller Pulsar and made a brief appearance in Franck Richard’s La Meute (The Pack).
In 2011, Schoenaerts portrayed Jacky Vanmarsenille, the main character in Bullhead, a film directed by Michaël R. Roskam. This movie was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
His acting in the movie was highly praised and earned him the FIPRESCI Award for Best Actor at the Palm Springs International Film Festival in January 2012. In 2012, Schoenaerts attended the Cannes Film Festival for the premiere of Rust and Bone, where he was joined by Marion Cotillard, Armand Verdure, and Jacques Audiard.
In 2012, he was the lead actor in Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone (De rouille et d’os) with Marion Cotillard. It was first shown at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival and received positive reviews and financial success in France. On February 22, 2013, Matthias was honored with the César Award for Most Promising Actor for his performance in Rust and Bone.
Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts both produced and played the lead role in the short film Death of a Shadow (Dood van een Schaduw), helmed by director Tom Van Avermaet. The film was recognized on 10 January 2013 with a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film.
Matthias Schoenaerts starred alongside Clive Owen, Billy Crudup, and Marion Cotillard once again in the 2014 thriller Blood Ties. He portrayed the character of Anthony Scarfo in the film, which was first shown at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.
In 2015, Schoenaerts was featured in a total of seven films. One of these was The Loft, a remake of a Belgian film, in which he reprised his role and marked his debut in English-language cinema.
Additionally, he played Eric Deeds in The Drop, his second collaboration with director Michael R. Roskam, alongside Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, and James Gandolfini.
Net Worth
Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts has a net worth of $4 million. He has appeared in numerous films, including Girl, Any Way the Wind Blows, Ellektra, Love Belongs to Everyone, Black Book, The Muse, Nadine, Left Blank, Loft, My Queen Karo, The Pack, Pulsar, Bullhead, Rust and Bone, Blood Ties, The Drop, A Little Chaos, The Loft, Far from the Madding Crowd, and Maryland.
