Naber is what Orson Welles termed as a ‘king actor.’ He can never merge into the background. He is physically imposing and therefore fills the screen with a commanding presence, and he has always been cast accordingly. He recently played the lead in the critically acclaimed TV-series Judas (2019), based on a lawyer’s real-life life-or-death struggle to get her brother, a Dutch crime kingpin, behind bars. This role earned him his second Golden Calf Award (the Dutch Oscar) for Best Actor. 

Back in 2018 Naber played the Viking king in Roel Reiné’s drama Redbad^**. In the same year he starred in My Foolish Heart^**, about the last day within the life of Chet Baker. In Mike van Diem’s Tulipani, Love Honour and A Bike^** (2017) Naber played the idealistic and romantic Dutchman Gauke who, after the Dutch floods of 1953, cycles to Puglia to grow fields of tulips. Earlier in his career, Naber starred as kidnapper Cor in Maarten Treurniet’s The Heineken Kidnapping^* (2011) and prior to that played the role of Cas in Paul Verhoeven’s modern classic World War II drama Black Book.

He has won The Golden Calf for Best Actor twice, and has bagged awards in The Netherlands for his work on stage. “Story-wise and character-wise there are so many layers to this film,” Naber says of The Story of My Wife, which he underlines was, for him, a genuine learning experience.

“It is really about acting. It is about life, about love, about not trying to control everything. It was also a lesson in who am I as an actor and what I am capable of and how can I develop myself within deeper and deeper layers. It was so totally different. And then getting into the Cannes festival, it is like an award in itself.”

Naber elaborates on the notion of control, telling how the film came at a time when he was assessing his future career, and deciding not to get too hung up on micro-managing its short and medium-term development. It was why he responded to Sándor Csoma’s request to star in the low key Hungarian short film, because it was an artistic challenge as opposed to a vehicle designed to propel him into the movie stratosphere. However, ironically, that is exactly what ended up happening.

The same principle of control applies to the craft of acting. “The moment you are not trying to control everything and just try to stay in the moment then some magical moments will happen, whether with the specific person sitting in front of or next to you or with the camera, and you get into this specific zone. It can be really difficult, sometimes you have it in one take and sometimes it can take up to 20 takes, but when you hit this specific moment, it is really fun.”

All of which is at delicious odds to the controlling character he plays in The Story of My Wife, whose fate is sealed by the bet he takes at the beginning of the film. “Yes, the captain in the film, it is the same with him. He is trying to hold onto everything and the harder he tries to control everything, the more trouble he gets himself into.”

For more information on the Cannes Film Festival, click here.

For more information on The Story Of My Wife, visit sales agent Films Boutique here.

To contact Gijs Naber's agency, visit Nummer19 here.
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^*Film is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund.
^**Film is supported by the Netherlands Film Production Incentive.