Laurien Van den Broeck

Laurien Van den Broeck was born on February 29th 1988 in Lier, Belgium. She was the third of five children. She has two older brothers: Filip and Willem van den Broeck, and two younger sisters: Charlotte and Astrid. Laurien played her first feature film role at the age of eleven: Mariken (2000), directed by André van Duren and co-written by Academy Award winner Willeke van Ammelrooy. Aged 13, she played the leading female role in Moonlight (2002) for which she was awarded the Young Actor's Award at the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival and for which she was nominated the Golden Calf for Best Actress (the Dutch equivalent of the Oscar) at the Netherlands Film Festival. Moonlight was directed by Academy Award nominee Paula van der Oest. In 2003 Laurien starred in The Memory of a Killer (2003), best Box Office for a Belgian film of all time. She played Magdalena Vermeer in Brush with Fate (2003), with Glenn Close and Ellen Burstyn. In 2007-2008 she played in Sara (2007) and Witse (2004), two of the most popular Belgian TV series of all time.