There is, however, a reason Schoenaerts has become known for his stature. In 2011’s Bullhead, his Oscar-nominated breakthrough vehicle, Schoenaerts enters scenes bobbing his massive shoulders as if channeling the beast of the title, flaunting the hulking physique required to play a man dependent on testosterone supplements. In 2012’s Rust and Bone, co-starring Marion Cotillard, he plays a bouncer-cum-kickboxer who brutalizes opponents for money, and breaks his hands when punching a frozen pond to save a drowning boy. As Schoenaerts pervades the American market, with a trove of stateside films slated for this fall and beyond, these are the popular images that accompany his rising star: shirt-busting muscles, feral movements, bloody knuckles.
Another reason Schoenaerts is greater than his frame is that he portrays characters whose insides dwarf their outsides completely. It’s no wonder the actor is often compared to Tom Hardy, another sensitive soul who’s sporting pounds of toned muscle, and who happens to be Schoenaerts’s co-star in September’s Brooklyn-set mob drama The Drop. For its September 2014 cover story, Schoenaerts talks to OUT’s R. Kurt Osenlund about his build his craft and all things skin-deep.
