Matthias Schoenaerts

Schoenaerts was born in Antwerp, Flanders, the Dutch speaking region of Belgium. He is the son of actor Julien Schoenaerts (1925–2006) and Dominique Wiche (1953–2016), a costume designer, translator and French teacher. He has an older half brother, Bruno Schoenaerts (born 1953), who is a lawyer. Schoenaerts is of Flemish descent through his father, although his maternal grandmother is from Liège, Wallonia, the French-speaking region of Belgium, and for the first six years of his life he lived with his maternal grandparents in Brussels. Schoenaerts grew up bilingual, speaking Dutch and French. He is also fluent in English, which he learned by watching American movies. In 1987, at nine years old, he appeared in a stage production of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince opposite his father, who was also the director. His mother, Dominique, was the costume designer of the play. He started producing graffiti as a teenager under the pseudonym "Zenith", going to New York to collaborate with the Bronx group TATS CRU. Schoenaerts was close to becoming a professional association football player and was on the books of Belgian team Beerschot AC, but gave up when he was 16 years old. In 2013, Schoenaerts stated that he was a fan of the Spanish football club FC Barcelona.