Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#118143
of 909177 performers
Top 25%
Maarten Heijmans works on quiet performance rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Maarten Heijmans appears in 4 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Maarten. A Beautiful Imperfection is the clearest case: a film rated 7.3 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, drama, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for drama, action, crime. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Michiel van Erp, Cecilia Verheyden, Diederik Van Rooijen, Maarten Heijmans helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
A Beautiful Imperfection (2024) as Jan van der Kemp · Ferry (2021) as Rico · Penoza: The Final Chapter (2019) as Lawyer Paul
Career snapshot
Ranked #118143 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
4
2019–2024
Career length
5 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.3
A Beautiful Imperfection
Average Nutevio score
5.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
A Beautiful Imperfection
Most frequent director
Michiel van Erp
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Michiel van Erp
Most common genre
Drama
3 titles
Average runtime
1h 26m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.1
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
2010s
6.7 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Penoza: The Final Chapter — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.7
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.7
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2010s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Penoza: The Final Chapter.
Most productive era
2020s
3 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.71 film | 7.02 films |
| Action | 6.71 film | 6.81 film |
| Thriller | 6.71 film | — |
| Crime | 6.71 film | 6.81 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Lawyer Paul.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
7.3 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once. The current state of the argument, as Jan van der Kemp.
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
4 of 4 films
as Rico
Directed by Cecilia Verheyden
as Lawyer Paul
Directed by Diederik Van Rooijen
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Jan van der Kemp
A Beautiful Imperfection (2024)
Performance score7.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Jan van der Kemp gives Maarten Heijmans a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Rico
Ferry (2021)
Performance score7.0
Ferry asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Rico is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Lawyer Paul
Penoza: The Final Chapter (2019)
Performance score6.6
Penoza: The Final Chapter asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Lawyer Paul is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Seahorse
Seahorse (2020)
Performance score6.5
Seahorse asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. The role is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Jan van der Kemp
Start here. A Beautiful Imperfection is the clearest statement of what Maarten Heijmans does — accessible, 102 minutes, and rated 7.3 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Maarten at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
Penoza: The Final Chapter (2019)
Keeps the drama register of A Beautiful Imperfection but asks for a colder reading of it.
Seahorse (2020)
A deliberate change of key after Penoza: The Final Chapter — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Ferry (2021)
A deliberate change of key after Seahorse — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Michiel van Erp
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Beautiful ImperfectionCecilia Verheyden
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
FerryDiederik Van Rooijen
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Penoza: The Final ChapterSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
A Beautiful Imperfection
as Jan van der Kemp
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
A Beautiful Imperfection
as Jan van der Kemp
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
A Beautiful Imperfection
as Jan van der Kemp
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Penoza: The Final Chapter
as Lawyer Paul
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
A Beautiful Imperfection
as Jan van der Kemp
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Maarten Heijmans has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Drama Legend
Awarded
3 catalogue titles in drama, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
A Beautiful Imperfection
as Jan van der Kemp
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Ferry
as Rico
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
A Beautiful Imperfection
as Jan van der Kemp
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Penoza: The Final Chapter
as Lawyer Paul
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Ferry
as Rico
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Penoza: The Final Chapter
as Lawyer Paul
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Ferry
as Rico
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Seahorse
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
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Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Leonardo DiCaprio
Built a career in the same territory: thriller and action
Robert De Niro
Built a career in the same territory: crime and thriller
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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