Jeroen Krabbé

Handsome Dutch actor and film director Jeroen Krabbé (1944) appeared in many Dutch and international films. He had his international breakthrough with two Dutch films by Paul Verhoeven and later played the villain in the James Bond film The Living Daylights (1987).


Dutch press photo. Jeroen Krabbé in De vierde man/The Fourth Man (Paul Verhoeven, 1983).


Dutch postcard.

The most expensive Dutch film ever

Jeroen Aart Krabbé was born into an artistic family in Amsterdam, Netherlands, in 1944. He was the son of Margreet (née Reiss), a Jewish film translator, and Maarten Krabbé, a well-known painter. After studying at the Rietveld Academy of Art, Amsterdam (1961-1962), Krabbé changed course and went to Drama School in Amsterdam, graduating in 1965.

In 1963, he made his film debut in the comedy Fietsen naar de maan/Bicycling to the Moon (Jef van der Heyden, 1963). Other early film appearances were in the German-Dutch comedy Professor Columbus (Rainer Erler, 1968) with Rudolf Platte, the American family film The Little Ark (James B. Clark, 1972) based on a novel by Jan de Hartog about the big flood in 1953 which struck a big part of The Netherlands, and the Dutch production Alicia (Wim Verstappen, 1974). However, Krabbé was mainly active on stage and TV. He founded a touring theatre company, directed plays, worked as a costume designer, and translated foreign plays into Dutch.

Internationally he first came to prominence in Paul Verhoeven's Dutch film Soldaat van Oranje/Soldier of Orange (1977) opposite Rutger Hauer. Soldaat van Oranje is set during the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II and shows how individual students have different roles in the war. The film had a budget of ƒ 5,000,000 (€2,300,000), at the time the most expensive Dutch film ever. With 1,547,183 viewers, it was the most popular Dutch film of 1977 and received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Foreign Language Film in 1980.

In the election for best Dutch film of the twentieth century at the Netherlands Film Festival in 1999, Soldaat van Oranje/Soldier of Orange reached second place, right after another Paul Verhoeven film Turks fruit/Turkish Delight (1973). Krabbé had a supporting part in Verhoeven’s Spetters (Paul Verhoeven, 1980), which was a small success in the US.

He played the lead in Een Vlucht Regenwulpen/A Flight of Rainbirds (Ate de Jong, 1981) and in the terrific erotic thriller De vierde man/The Fourth Man (Paul Verhoeven, 1983). In the latter, Renée Soutendijk plays a woman who may or may not have killed her three previous husbands. Krabbé is the intended fourth, a broken-down bisexual writer who is pulled into Soutendijk's web like an unsuspecting fly. De vierde man/The Fourth Man was a decent box office hit in the Netherlands and was even more successful in the United States, where it received widespread critical acclaim. This helped to launch Krabbé’s international career.


Dutch postcard.


Dutch postcard. Publicity still for the TV quiz Zo Vader, Zo Zoon/Like Father Like Son (ca. 1975) with the other panel members author Henri Knap, politician Willem Aantjes and actress Elly van Stekelenburg, and left host Gerard van den Berg.


Dutch press photo. Jeroen Krabbé and Renée Soutendijk in De vierde man/The Fourth Man (Paul Verhoeven, 1983).

James Bond villain

Jeroen Krabbé had already started to work in international productions. He had a part in the Emmy Award-winning miniseries World War III (Boris Sagal, David Greene, 1982) with Rock Hudson and David Soul. In Great Britain, he played Ben Kingsley’s neighbour in the drama Turtle Diary (John Irvin, 1985) based on a screenplay adapted by Harold Pinter from Russell Hoban's novel.

His first big American film was the Whoopi Goldberg comedy Jumpin' Jack Flash (Penny Marshall, 1986). However, it was his roles as villains in a string of international productions which brought him international stardom. Notable roles included Losado in No Mercy (Richard Pearce, 1986) opposite Richard Gere, and Gianni Franco in The Punisher (Mark Goldblatt, 1989) starring Dolph Lundgren.

He is probably best remembered as KGB agent General Georgi Koskov in The Living Daylights (John Glen, 1987), the fifteenth entry in the James Bond film series and the first to star Timothy Dalton.

Other interesting films were the British-Dutch production Shadow Man (Piotr Andrejew, 1988) about a Polish-Jewish refugee (Tom Hulce) during a fictional war in Amsterdam, the British drama Scandal (Michael Caton Jones, 1989), a fictionalised account of the Profumo Affair, with Ian McKellen as the conservative Minister of War.

He also played in two early films by Steven Soderbergh, the mystery thriller Kafka (Steven Soderbergh, 1991), featuring Jeremy Irons, and King of the Hill (Steven Soderbergh, 1993), which was nominated for the Palme d'Or, at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival.


Dutch press photo. Jeroen Krabbé in De vierde man/The Fourth Man (Paul Verhoeven, 1983).


Dutch press photo. Jeroen Krabbé in De Vierde Man/The Fourth man (Paul Verhoeven, 1983).


Dutch autograph card.

The discovery of heaven

In Hollywood, Jeroen Krabbé appeared in the romantic drama The Prince of Tides (Barbra Streisand, 1991), and as Dr. Charles Nichols in the box-office smash The Fugitive (Andrew Davis, 1993) opposite Harrison Ford. In the meanwhile, he kept working in the European cinema. In the Netherlands, he appeared in Voor een Verloren Soldaat/For a Lost Soldier (Roeland Kerbosch, 1992) based upon the autobiographical novel of the same title by ballet dancer and choreographer Rudi van Dantzig. He appeared as the composer George Frideric Handel in Farinelli (Gérard Corbiau 1994) about the life and career of the Italian castrato singer Farinelli (Stefano Dionisi).

He was both director and producer of Left Luggage (1998), a film about Orthodox Jews during the 1970s in Antwerp, Belgium, co-starring Isabella Rossellini and Maximilian Schell. Left Luggage was entered into the 48th Berlin International Film Festival. Krabbé also directed The Discovery of Heaven (Jeroen Krabbé, 2001), based on the novel by Harry Mulisch and starring Stephen Fry.

He continued to appear in international productions, like the American biographical drama Dangerous Beauty (Marshall Herskovitz, 1998), Ever After: A Cinderella Story (Andy Tennant, 1998) starring Drew Barrymore, the big-budget Hollywood crime comedy Ocean's Twelve (Steven Soderbergh, 2004) with George Clooney and Brad Pitt, and the British Gothic Horror film Snuff-Movie (Bernard Rose, 2005) in which he starred as a Horror filmmaker. His television work includes playing Satan in the Biblical telefilm Jesus (Roger Young, 1999) and an uncanny psychic in series 11 of Midsomer Murders, Talking to the Dead (2008).

In 2005 he presented for Dutch television the documentary series Allemaal theater/All Theatre, about the post-war history of the Dutch theatre. For this, he interviewed many actors, directors, writers and comedians. In 2007 he made a similar series about film history, Allemaal film/All Film. Apart from acting and directing, he is an accomplished artist. In 2004 Jeroen Krabbé: Schilder/Jeroen Krabbé: painter by Ruud van der Neut, a comprehensive account of his career in painting, was published in Dutch and English editions. He also co-authored a Dutch cookbook. He appeared in the successful Dutch TV series In therapie/In Treatment (Alain de Levita, 2011), the comedy Alleen maar nette mensen/Only Decent People (Lodewijk Crijns, 2012) as the father of Geza Weisz, and the historical war drama Tula: The Revolt (Jeroen Leinders, 2013), about the big slave uprising on the island of Curacao in 1795. In 2014 Krabbé was on the stage again for the first time in almost ten years in the play 'Vaslav', in which he played the role of Serge Diaghilev.

In 2015, Krabbé came up with a successful TV series about Vincent van Gogh. In the following years, he came up with sequels about the lives of Pablo Picasso (2017), Paul Gauguin (2018), Marc Chagall (2020), Frida Kahlo (2022) and Henri Matisse (2024). His later films include the crime thriller The Host (Andy Newbery, 2020) with Mike Beckingham and Maryam Hassouni and the comedy Neem me mee (Will Koopman, 2023) in which he reunited with Renée Soutendijk. Jeroen Krabbé has three sons with his wife Herma van Gemert, radio and TV presenter Martijn Krabbé, artist and TV presenter Jasper Krabbé and Jacob Krabbé. His brother is master chess player, journalist and novelist Tim Krabbé.


Trailer De vierde man/The Fourth Man (1983). Source: Malvolio80 (YouTube).


Original theatrical trailer for The Fugitive (1993). Source: Forever Cinematic Trailers (YouTube).


Trailer The Discovery of Heaven (2001). Source: filmkolumne (YouTube).

Sources: Sandra Brennan (AllMovie - Page now defunct), Poul Webb (Art & Artists), Wikipedia (English and Dutch), and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 11 January 2025.

De vierde man (1983)

EFSP congratulates 83-years-young Dutch director Paul Verhoeven with his new film, Benedetta (2021) which will be released in Dutch cinemas tomorrow. Benedetta, played by Virginie Efira, is a 17th-century lesbian nun in Italy, who suffers from disturbing religious and erotic visions. Nearly 40 years ago, Verhoeven made a film about a Catholic, bisexual writer who has frequent erotic and religious visions of death, De vierde man/The Fourth Man (1983).

This stylish Dutch erotic thriller and black comedy, starring Jeroen Krabbé, Renée Soutendijk, and Thom Hoffman, is based on a novel by Gerard Reve. The film was a box-office hit in the Netherlands and became the highest-grossing Dutch film of all time in the United States. Like Benedetta, De vierde man/The Fourth Man is frank, sexy and violent, and very interesting. The press photos in this post are vintage. I gathered them when I worked as a freelance film critic during the 1980s.


Dutch press photo. Jeroen Krabbé in De vierde man/The Fourth Man (Paul Verhoeven, 1983).


Dutch press photo. Jeroen Krabbé in De vierde man/The Fourth Man (Paul Verhoeven, 1983).


Dutch press photo. Renée Soutendijk in De vierde man/The Fourth Man (Paul Verhoeven, 1983).


Dutch press photo. Jeroen Krabbé and Renée Soutendijk in De vierde man/The Fourth Man (Paul Verhoeven, 1983).

Finding three film reels with names of men

De vierde man/The Fourth Man follows Gerard (Jeroen Krabbé), a bisexual, alcoholic writer who is invited to give a lecture to the Literary Society of the city of Vlissingen. At the train station, he cruises an attractive young man for sex, but the man embarks on another train.

During his lecture, Gerard is incessantly filmed by a mysterious woman with a handheld camera. Afterward, he is introduced to her. She is Christine Halsslag (Renée Soutendijk), a wealthy widow who owns the Spider beauty shop. The two have sex, after which Gerard has a nightmare in which Christine cuts off his penis with scissors.

In the morning, Christine tells Gerard she is a widow, having lost her husband Johan in an accident. Later, in Christine's salon, Gerard finds a photograph of her attractive German lover, Herman (Thom Hoffman), and realizes he is the same man he encountered in the train station. He urges her to bring Herman to her house to spend a couple of days together, but with the secret intention of seducing the man.

Christine travels to Köln to bring her boyfriend and Gerard stays alone in her house. He drinks whiskey and snoops through her safe, finding three film reels with names of men; he decides to watch the footage and discovers that Christine had married each; all of whom died in tragic accidents.

While he attempts to pursue Herman, Gerard is plagued by a series of disturbing visions suggesting the mysterious Christine may be a Black Widow who has chosen him as her fourth victim.


Dutch photo: Jeroen Krabbé and Renee Soutendijk in De Vierde Man/The Fourth man (Paul Verhoeven, 1983).


Dutch press photo. Renée Soutendijk in De vierde man/The Fourth Man (Paul Verhoeven, 1983).


Dutch press photo. Jeroen Krabbé and Renée Soutendijk in De vierde man/The Fourth Man (Paul Verhoeven, 1983).


Dutch photo: Jeroen Krabbé in De Vierde Man/The Fourth man (Paul Verhoeven, 1983).

Pulled into Soutendijk's web, like an unsuspecting fly

Robert Firsching writes at AllMovie that De vierde man/The Fourth Man: "gained a cult following for its frank treatment of bisexuality, bizarre visuals, and an extremely sexy performance by Renee Soutendijk as a woman who may or may not have killed her three previous husbands. Jeroen Krabbe is terrific as the intended fourth, a broken-down bisexual writer who is pulled into Soutendijk's web, like an unsuspecting fly.

Bloody and erotic, De Vierde Man will also interest fans of director Paul Verhoeven, who returned to many of the same themes in his smash American hit Basic Instinct."

De vierde man was a box office hit in the Netherlands, gaining 274,699 admissions, but lower than the millions of visitors Verhoeven's previous films had. The film was more successful in the United States, where it received widespread critical acclaim and was the highest-grossing Dutch film of all time with a gross of $1.7 million. The Fourth Man earned the 1983 International Critics' Award at the Toronto International Film Festival and was nominated for the 1983 Gold Hugo for Best Feature Award at the Chicago International Film Festival

At Roger Ebert.com, Peter Sobczynski writes that De vierde man is one of "Verhoeven’s most interesting films. (...) For more than 45 years, director Paul Verhoeven has been shocking and entertaining audiences, both in his homeland of the Netherlands and in Hollywood, with a series of heady cinematic cocktails that mix explicit violence and sexuality, cutting narratives, plenty of social commentary and levels of moral ambiguity rarely seen in contemporary commercial cinema.

Needless to say, his jabs at cinematic propriety have not always found favor with critics and audiences at the time they were released. But to look at them today, divorced from all the controversies that often surrounded them during their initial distributions, one can finally appreciate him as one of the most audacious filmmakers of our time—one of the few whose works could comfortably play in both the toniest of art houses and the sleaziest of grind houses and seem perfectly at home in either one."


Dutch press photo. Jeroen Krabbé and Renée Soutendijk in De vierde man/The Fourth Man (Paul Verhoeven, 1983).


Dutch press photo. Jeroen Krabbé and Thom Hoffman in De vierde man/The Fourth Man (Paul Verhoeven, 1983).


Dutch press photo. Geert de Jong in De vierde man/The Fourth Man (Paul Verhoeven, 1983).


Dutch press photo. Thom Hoffman in De vierde man/The Fourth Man (Paul Verhoeven, 1983).


Dutch press photo. Jeroen Krabbé in De vierde man/The Fourth Man (Paul Verhoeven, 1983).

Sources: Peter Sobczynski (Roger Ebert.com), Robert Firsching (AllMovie), Wikipedia, and IMDb.