One of Europe’s most celebrated actresses, Carice van Houten is perhaps best known as ‘Melisandre’ in the iconic TV show Game of Thrones, a performance for which she has been recognized with an Emmy Award nomination in 2019. Other projects include Paul Verhoeven’s award-winning Black Book and Bryan Singer’s Valkyrie opposite Tom Cruise and as Melisandre on Game of Thrones. Recent projects include Instinct and Temple, a TV show for Sky opposite Mark Strong, which has been picked up for a second season.Her Dutch-language feature Love Life, gained her further critical acclaim and broke box office records in her native Holland. Her next film Happy Housewive won her a record breaking 5th Golden Calf at The Netherlands Film Festival and was voted ‘Best Dutch Actress of All Time’ by the Dutch audience. Other awards include Best Actress for Black Butterflies at the Tribeca Film Festival and the Best Performance award for Instinct at the Les Arcs Film Festival 2019.Her credits include Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s Intruders and Bill Condon’s The Fifth Estate, the Jesse Owens biopic, Race, with Jason Sudekis and Jeremy Irons and voiced a character in The Simpsons. She can also be seen in Brian de Palma’s Domino and in Brimstone, opposite Dakota Fanning, Guy Pearce and Kit Harrington, and The Glass Room, with Claes Bang. She played a leading role in Halina Reijn’s directorial feature debut Instinct, opposite Marwan Kenzari (Aladdin), which won the Variety Piazza Grande Award in Locarno Film Festival 2019. Instinct is the first outing for the Carice and Halina’s production banner, Man Up.Up next is the new Dutch series Red Light, in which she not only plays the lead role but she is also creative producer of the show, together with Halina and their production company Man Up The show is expected to air in Autumn 2020.
Carice van Houten
Movies
Race
In the 1930s, Jesse Owens is a young man who is the first in his family to go to college. Going to Ohio State to train under its track and field coach, Larry Snyder, the young African American athlete quickly impresses with his tremendous potential that suggests Olympic material. However,…
Fun Facts
Often plays in films of director Martin Koolhoven, for whom she played the part that made her famous (Suzy Q (1999)).
Is fluent in Dutch, English, German and French.
Older sister of actress, singer and stage-designer Jelka van Houten.
Met former boyfriend Sebastian Koch on the set of Black Book (2006).
Singin' in the Rain (1952) is her personal favorite movie of all time.
Went to St. Bonifatius College in Utrecht.
Born to Margje Stasse, who is on board of the Dutch educational TV, and Theodore van Houten, a writer and broadcaster.
Played the character of Gretchen Ferris in Ridley Scott's Body of Lies (2008), but all her scenes were deleted in the final cut.
Is a WWF ambassador since 2009.
Scored a #1 hit in The Netherlands with Dutch rock band, Kane, in 2010.
She is named after the daughter of the English composer, Sir Edward Elgar, due to the fact that Carice's father was investigating the secret of "Elgars Enigma Variations"".
She was approached to play the role of ""Cersei Lannister"" in Game of Thrones (2011)
Quotes
I don't do method acting. If I play a farmer I'm not gonna spend 3 weeks on a chicken farm. That's a bit too much for me. For Minoes (in which she played a cat in a woman's body) I didn't spend 3 weeks in a cat pound.
In The Netherlands you know who the good and the bad are if I have to say it so black and white. You can orientate yourself better in your own country. Here everything is overwhelming. It is very difficult to know who to trust here.
To me, that's not the most difficult thing. To transform. I don't really see it happen. I don't have the feeling I am transforming, really. I don't believe you can get into somebody's character but more that somebody comes in you. You just use yourself. In everything I play, I feel like it is me. I just say different things on different times and look different.
If you are not in America fast enough, it must have failed. When there is another thing like, maybe I don't want to go to America. I mean, it's not SO great there anyway...
On what foreign press wants to know: I think they're all waiting for a crazy story about Paul (Verhoeven), that he exploded once or something, but I keep telling them he's a sweet man so I keep letting them down. And what it's like to be naked on a set. They all think that's very exciting. I just answer that in Holland, it's weird not to be naked on a set so we're all used to it.
[About her scenes being cut from Body of Lies (2008)] It sounds much more pitiful than it is. To be honest, I was wondering several times on set what my character was actually adding to the story.
There is a saying that doesn't translate well, but it goes something like 'act normal because you are crazy enough'.
I do this acing thing mostly for myself. I like to make a connection and communicate with the audience to make myself feel less lonely.
[on the 'Game of Thrones' genre] It has made me more open to fantasy. It's so much richer than I thought it would be. You can easily write it off as Disney for grownups, but it's great that this comes from someone's brain, and tickles your imagination. I can see now why the geeks have been geeky about it.
[on her career, 2014] I'm not as keen on playing in the American big leagues. There's so much more to my life than being in a big American movie. I'm a singer and working on my second album. I write and produce. There is so much more that satisfies me. I will never become an American movie star. I'm a European actress that is lucky to be in a show like ['Game of Thrones'].
[on the chance that her character in 'Game of Thrones' might die] It's sad if you get killed off, but it's also the fun part. It's like roulette. It's easier for me to say this because I have magical powers, which make it harder for the writers to kill me off. But I have a feeling that I won't get away with anything.
[on portraying Melisandre in 'Game of Thrones'] Playing evil is just not interesting. I don't think anyone who does evil stuff thinks they're doing evil stuff. That's the scary part. The people who do things we despise or don't understand - they think they're doing a good thing, which is so scary. I think that is the only way for me to play her, because otherwise I'm fighting with her.
[2009] I smoked two packets of cigarettes a day for 15 years, until two years ago when I quit. I don't drink water or go to the gym, and I eat sweets. But for the first time I'm now thinking about this because I'm over 30 and I feel things are loosening up. [she pulls a jokey face]
[2009] I've just done a year of theatre in Holland, which I love, and I wouldn't like to move to Hollywood permanently. I wouldn't give up my life and my friends and family in Holland. I'm ambitious, but not that ambitious - for me, there's more to life than work. Luckily, no one in Hollywood has told me that I'm too fat or too European. I intend to stay anti-Botox. It scares me, the fashion for it. I have even started wearing bras that don't lift, because it seemed that everybody had to wear push-up bras. I want to be more natural, I'm sick of all these big boobs.