Sounds a little like his career perhaps?
"Yes. The funny thing is, I never even considered being an actor. At age 21 I signed up for the exams for the National Academy for the Dramatic Arts in Antwerp but I wasn't really considering it long-term. I enjoyed it and before I knew it, I graduated and realised, 'Oh, I'm an actor'."
Isn't it an unstable sort of profession not best taken up on a whim?
"Well, what triggered it was a very personal and dramatic event in my life. My dad used to be an actor. Towards the end of his life he was in a coma," He pauses.
"I had a pretty complex relationship with him and I hadn't seen him in a long time before that. (His parents never married and he was raised by his mother in Antwerp and his grandmother in Brussels.) Somehow, I thought if I became an actor it would bring me closer to him in an emotional and creative way and that's what inspired the choice to sign up."
The death of Schoenaerts' father in 2006 coincided with his first starring role in the Belgian film, Love Belongs to Everyone. Previously he had played small parts (aged 15 he starred in Oscar-nominated film Daens), but still regarded acting as a hobby.
Then in 2011, Schoenaerts starred in the acclaimed Bullhead and the following year electrified Hollywood with his performance opposite Cotillard in the intense Rust and Bone. He re-teamed with her for Blood Ties, opposite Clive Owen.
Much of the success of Far From the Madding Crowd weighs on Schoenaerts' impressively built shoulders.
Says Vinterberg, "Matthias is a chunk of a man: he's extremely sexy and yet sensible. In the movie he was able to really listen to a woman and yet still be very much a man. And he's humiliated by her. He waits and waits for this woman but at the same time there's a lot of testosterone there and we needed that."
Vinterberg's previous Danish movies haven't been big on period romantic sagas. What attracted him to this one?
"I liked that it's this story of a very modern woman 140 years ago, which I found fascinating," he explains. "And I enjoyed that we were able to shoot everything on location in the West Country where the book is based. I think the three suitors are like piano keys that bring out the universal tale of being a man.
"Matthias fills up the room and shines in front of the camera."
The cast had to be convincing as rural workers.
Offers Schoenaerts, "We all did a kind of farming boot camp two weeks before shooting. I learned everything that there is to learn about sheep: how to shave them, how to de-bloat them, how to wash and all other aspects that comes with life on a farm. I love that it's part of our craft as actors to discover things we would never discover if we had a different career."
Like his brooding character, the actor believes in true love. "It sounds like a naive concept, but actually it's not. We have cynical reflexes to stories like this but love can absolutely overcome everything. Love is that indestructible conviction where in the end, love can conquer everything. And it's really, really, really true."
Who: Matthias Schoenaerts
What: Far from the Madding Crowd
When: At cinemas from Thursday
- TimeOut
