After acting in several Dutch plays, movies, and television series, van Wageningen was asked to come to Hollywood to appear in Steven Spielberg's Minority Report.
Back in the Netherlands, he starred in Winter in Wartime, based on a Dutch novel about World War II.
In 2011, he appeared in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo along with Daniel Craig, in the role of Nils Bjurman, the sexually abusive guardian of Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara).
He garnered praise in the Dutch press for his portrayal of Ronnie, an Amsterdam gangster who experiences a spiritual resurrection after miraculously surviving an assassination attempt, in the 2013 film De wederopstanding van een klootzak.
[1][2][3] In 2017, Van Wageningen was reported to be filming one of his last major roles, a remake of 1973's Papillon, and in pre-production for Simon de Waal's The Fear of God, before shifting his attention to "improving the position of creators in the Netherlands".