Schoenaerts' performance in the film earned him a César Award for Most Promising Actor in 2013. Like Audiard's previous films, 'Rust and Bone' received a breathless reception at the Cannes Film Festival with a ten-minute standing ovation at the end of its screening and was a critical and box office hit in France. In 2012, Schoenaerts got the lead role opposite Marion Cotillard in Jacques Audiard's Іржа та кістка (2012), in the film he played Ali, an ex-boxer who falls in love with Cotillard's character. His powerful performance in the tragic role won awards at numerous film festivals and propelled 'Bullhead' to an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film in 2012. Impressed by the script, Schoenaerts committed to star in the film in 2005, and over the five years that it took first-time director Roskam to secure financing, the actor transformed his naturally thin body into that of a steroid abusing brute. Roskam's Rundskop (2011), playing Jacky Vanmarsenille, a cattle farmer who becomes entangled with the underworld of bovine hormones and steroids. In 2011, Schoenaerts starred in Michaël R. In 2010, he played the lead role in Alex Stockman's techno-thriller Pulsar (2010). In 2009, he worked once again with director Dorothée Van Den Berghe, playing the hippie Raven in My Queen Karo (2009). In the same year, he also starred in the horror film Linkeroever (2008). The dramatic thriller was a smash hit, becoming the top-grossing Flemish film of all time. Though Schoenaerts garnered critical praise for his role in 'Love Belongs to Everyone', the film that would make him a star in his homeland came in 2008, in Erik Van Looy's Лофт (2008), Schoenaerts played Filip, one of a group of married friends who share the rent on a downtown loft as a place to meet their respective mistresses. In 2006, he had a small role as a member of the Dutch Resistance in Paul Verhoeven's Чорна книга (2006), and landed his first starring role in the Belgian film Dennis van Rita (2006), playing Dennis, a mentally-challenged man learning to adjust to life after a prison sentence for a rape he may not have committed. He also appeared in Ellektra (2004) alongside his father. In 2004, Schoenaerts produced and starred in the short film A Message from Outer Space (2004). With his role in Tom Barman's Any Way the Wind Blows (2003), he proved he was Flanders' young actor to watch. In 2002, he starred in Dorothée Van Den Berghe's directorial debut Meisje (2002), which was also his first feature film since Daens. By the time he graduated in 2003, Schoenaerts was already named one of 'Europe's Shooting Stars' by the influential marketing organization, European Film Promotion. By age 21, he was enrolled at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Antwerp and was acting professionally in small roles on Belgian television and in Belgian film.

Schoenaerts enrolled in film school but was expelled for poor attendance in his second year.

He made his film debut at the age of 13, alongside his father in the Belgian film Daens (1992), which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

His mother, Dominique Wiche, was a costume designer, translator and French teacher, and his father was actor Julien Schoenaerts. Matthias Schoenaerts was born on Decemin Antwerp, Belgium.

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