Halina Reijn

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. 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 Noord Nederlands Toneel) 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 undiagnosed pulmonary embolism. Following her father's death, the family moved to a newly built neighborhood of Groningen in order to escape the isolation. From age eleven onwards under the tutelage of Josja Hamann, she attended the Vooropleiding Theater in Groningen, a selective academy where they were giving lessons and had to rehearse every midday.