_{Yannick Jozefzoon}

It’s all in the spit. Versatile Dutch actor Yannick Jozefzoon (chosen as Dutch Shooting Star at this year’s Berlinale) gives one of his most striking performances in Dan Geesin’s Kafkaesque art house drama, Sputum*, in which he plays a character with very powerful saliva glands. This might seem particularly esoteric but Jozefzoon has also appeared in mainstream series like Amsterdam Vice, Geldwolven and Bonnie & Clyde. He’s an accomplished stage actor too.

“I just feel really delighted because I am always looking for new experiences in my life and this is just a new experience,” Jozefzoon enthuses about being selected alongside some of Europe’s most talented young screen actors for the Berlin event. “I am really looking forward to meeting all the other Shooting Stars, the casting directors… I am really looking forward to experiencing something new.”

Born in 1990, Jozefzoon has been acting for many years and usually plays characters in their early 20’s. He was 11 years old and still in elementary school in Leiden when he played his first significant role, as the Artful Dodger in a school stage production of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist. He made a strong impression and his aunt [a make-up artist] encouraged him to sign up with a casting agency. He did so - and that was when his professional career began in earnest, between the ages of 12 and 15. “I really liked it and I knew, alright, this is what I want to do.”

Acting isn’t just a profession for the young Dutch star. He also sees it as a life skill - a way of exploring and understanding himself better. “We play with frequencies, we play with emotions and energies - and I think that is a spiritual thing,” he suggests. “It’s about manifesting and creating new realities.”

Jozefzoon’s father is a businessman who now lives in Sierra Leone, and his mother works in healthcare training - so he is not from a theatrical family. They have supported him, though, and were happy when he was accepted at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Maastricht, one of the best drama schools in the Netherlands. The training was demanding and the students were steeped in Shakespeare and classical tragedy. Nonetheless, Jozefzoon relished being there. “It was a cool time in my life.”

It didn’t take him long to establish himself after drama school. “Holland is a small country and once you get noticed, people just know who you are,” he explains why he found himself so quickly in demand. “When the jobs came in, I took them all because I wanted to have work and I wanted to show both to myself and, I think, a bit to the rest of the world, that I am an actor now because I have [professional] work.”

And, yes, Jozefzoon enjoys the contrasts between the very different jobs he takes on. Sputum was on the art house spectrum (“I really wanted to do that because it was odd, it was weird”) but he was appearing in plenty of mainstream dramas as well. “Those were good mainstream things,” he clarifies. “It has to be of a certain level.”

His credits have included such film and TV projects as In Blue**, Hollands Hoop, Tom Adelaar* and the recent ballet-based film Piece of My Heart**. He’ll go “method” when it’s necessary, for example undergoing weight loss for a role and trying to get deep into the heads of his characters.

“I have many different personalities within myself,” the actor ends. “I’m a mixed race kid. I have family all over the world. I have family all over the Netherlands. There are so many energies, so many people inside of me!”

The prestigious networking programme for up-and-coming acting talents European Shooting Stars is organized by European Film Promotion and runs between February 17 and 20.

For more information:

European Film Promotion
Helen Peetzen (Press & Communications)
Ph: +49 40 398 4030
peetzen@efp-online.com
www.efp-online.com

Yannick Jozefzoon
Benny Stroet - Favor Talents
Ph: +31 6 1516 3616
benny@favortalents.com
www.favortalents.com
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*Film is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund
**Film is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund and Film Production Incentive