Kevin Janssens

The Body as a Working Tool

Kevin Janssens arrived on the set of The Ardennes in 2015 with a shaved head and an aggression Belgian industry had not seen coming. Before that shoot, he was a friendly face on Flemish television, but that role as Kenneth changed his career forever.

In 2006, he graduated from the Studio Herman Teirlinck in Antwerp. That acting school is known for its technical rigor, and Janssens made the most of every minute to shape a physique he would later use as a weapon in his films.

And it worked.

His time on Vermist in 2008 gave him the fame he needed to take on riskier projects. But the actor wanted to break away from the TV heartthrob image that producers in Brussels kept trying to pin on him.

The international breakthrough of 2017

The premiere of Revenge in 2017 definitively put him on the global map. Coralie Fargeat chose him to play a villain who was pure testosterone and contained violence in the middle of the Moroccan desert.

Three million euros was the approximate budget of that French film, which ended up earning far more through secondary markets and digital rental platforms.

But his biggest challenge came with constant physical transformation. Janssens often says he prefers roles that force him to change the way he walks or his body weight. Because physicality is his main narrative engine.

In 2019, he shot The Room alongside Olga Kurylenko. There, he explored a far more subtle psychological horror than his earlier action work, proving his gaze works just as well in the silences as in the screams.

Diamonds and Family Drama

In 2023, he starred in Rough Diamonds for a streaming platform, a production set in the Jewish quarter of Antwerp. The role of Noah Wolf required him to learn Yiddish and immerse himself in a closed-off culture during months of preparation before filming.

The series stayed for weeks among the most-watched titles on the platform in Europe.

So the actor decided to return to arthouse cinema with The Chapel in 2023, directed by Dominique Deruddere. He plays a supporting but essential character in a story about the pressure of success in classical music.

In 2024, he took part in the production of The Flood. Filming took place mainly on locations in Belgium and the Netherlands with a crew of 80 people.