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.