Reijn found it inadequate and thought the other children did not take it seriously enough, which led her mother to pursue an audition with the theater collective De Voorziening (precursor to the Noord Nederlands Toneel [nl]) despite being only ten years old.
[10] From age eleven onwards under the tutelage of Josja Hamann,[15] she attended the Vooropleiding Theater in Groningen, a selective youth academy where they were giving lessons and had to rehearse every midday.
[18][17] in a 1994 interview with Nieuwsblad van het Noorden, she stated that she upon receiving her diploma, that she would apply at theater schools in Maastricht, Arnhem and Amsterdam, with the Sonja Moore academy in New York as a back-up.
[29] The following year she starred in her first in telefilm [nl], an initiative started by the NPO in 1998 to produce films for public television,[30] De Trein van zes uur tien, a Dutch thriller directed by Frank Ketelaar that was broadcast by AVRO.
[32] That same year she played a bit part as a sex worker in Martin Koolhoven's breakout film, Suzy Q, which featured Reijn's lifelong friend Carice van Houten in the title role.
The fusion, however, did not prove fruitful in the long term, the newly formed company was steeped in financial difficulties, infighting between the co-founders, overworked actors and in the later years there would be conflict with the government over subsidies.
[38][39][40] Further that year, she would star in Nanouk Leopold's directorial debut, tragicomedy Îles flottantes, it follows the dysfunctional lives of three friends who all recently turned thirty.
[45][43] Between her two film releases in 2001, she also participated in De acteurs, a seven part weekly series where fourteen young actors were interviewed and paired up with each other to rehearse scenes from a miniseries created by Kim van Kooten.
[46] that same year, Reijn gained further notoriety with her role in the tragicomedy, Zus & Zo, alongside De Trust peers,[47] which was written and directed by Paula van der Oest.
[53][54] She also starred in her second short, Flicka, as the title role, in which she played a computer programme who is in relationship with a lonely building supervisor, it was produced as part of NTR Kort! [nl].
First she played a minor part in Frank Van Passel's Villa des Roses,[58][59] her first role in an English/French language international co-production, based on the novel of the same name by Willem Elsschot.
[113] Reijn then starred in Black Book, a World War II drama-thriller co-written and directed by Paul Verhoeven and co-starring Carice van Houten and Sebastian Koch.
Set in Nazi occupied Netherlands, the film featured her as Ronnie, an opportunist who prioritizes her own luxury and survival during the war in contrast with Rachel Steinn (van Houten), a Jewish woman on the run, who gets involved with the Dutch resistance.
[114] She originally auditioned for the lead role, but was passed over in favour of van Houten and was given the part of Ronnie instead; Verhoeven found her appearance a better match for the latter character, they wanted a softer less pronounced look for the protagonist.
In the film she played a withdrawn albino woman, whose face is fully scarred and who has severe insecurities about her appearance that one day she gets hired to read for a recently blind man.
[133][130][134] On television she starred in the two-part mini-series biographical drama, De Prins en het Meisje, that loosely depicts the controversial engagement and its fallout between Mabel Wisse Smit and the late Prince Friso, portrayed respectively by Reijn and Fedja van Huêt.
[138][139] Upon her return to Europe, she went back to stage with an adaptation of Luchino Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers which had its premiere in German at the Ruhrtriennale festival before coming to Amsterdam following May.
[143] She had supporting role as Margarethe von Oven alongside her Black Book co-star Carice van Houten, in the Tom Cruise vehicle Valkyrie.
[169] Reijn gravitated to the script due to it engagement with current events, and joined the cast despite the fact that her role as receptionist Deniz, described as a "cold formal type", was only secondary.
[170][171] She would also come back to television with the first season of In therapie [nl] alongside van Houten,[172][173] the Dutch version of the Israelian BeTipul,[174] In the show she plays Lara, a doctor, who falls for her therapist.
[176] After a four-year hiatus she reprised her leading role in Hedda Gabler,[177] and would return for another season in the second half of 2011, followed-up by a final show at the Munich Kammerspiele in July 2012.
(The Russians),[192] an adaptation written by Tom Lanoye that rewrites Anton Chekhov's Platonov and Ivanov into a five hour long tragicomedy set in the modern day,[193] that involved the entire emsemble of the company.
[195][196] Her single film release in 2011, was in the psychological thriller Isabelle as the titular character, a famous and beautiful actress who is abducted and held captive by a disfigured artist.
[211] For the Netherlands Film Festival, Reijn was one of a handful actors involved in a thriller short which was based on suggestions and feedback from Twitter users with only the basic premise prewritten.
The award was created in 2010 by Toneelgroep Amsterdam and Stadsschouwburg in order to honor the careers of actresses who have made an indelible impression on the public on theater, and in the world television and film with Courbois being the inaugural recipient.
[234] Reijn portrayed four characters, three women and one man, St. Just, Julie, Lucile and Marion, in a radical restaging of Georg Büchner's Danton's Death, directed by Johan Simons.
[235] In collaboration with theatre director Adelheid Roosen and De oversteek project, this new version incorperated hundrerd of local regular folks in their own clothing that are inserted in select scenes.
[237][238][239] Loek Zonneveld writing for the De Groene, noted Reijn's acting as the three women a "strong one-woman choir commentator", but adding, St. Just, Robespierre alter ego, a "strange directerial choice" that "doesn't hold up".
[247] 2020 saw the release of Red Light, a Belgian-Dutch TV series starring Reijn that follows three women who become entangled in matters of human trafficking after one of their husbands goes missing.
[259][138] Her second book was a collection of columns, presented as a diary, which she wrote for Viva, called "Halina: doen alsof ik iemand anders ben" (Prometheus, 2009).