Halina Reijn (; born 10 November 1975) is a Dutch actress, writer and film director. Early life and education 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. When she was around six or seven years old she and one of her sisters wanted to join the Catholic Church, to the shock of their parents. After they relented, the children would go to Sunday school, and when Reijn was twelve she was baptised. 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 ) 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. 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. Career 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