Christine Chrispijn - van Meeteren

Biography

Christine van Meeteren was a Dutch actress. She made her stage debut in 1905. That same year she married the successful stage director and actor Louis Chrispijn Sr. Together they toured the Dutch East Indies in 1908.

In 1913, they were invited by producer and director Maurits H. Binger to join his steady core of actors at Filmfabriek Hollandia. At Hollandia, Van Meeteren acted alongside e.g. Annie Bos in a number of comic films about the Zeeland girls 'Mijntje en Trijntje'. Chrispijn became Hollandia's first permanent director. Not long afterwards, in 1915, he returned to the stage, and a year later divorced from Van Meeteren.

Van Meeteren also stopped working at Hollandia, and in 1917 travelled to the Dutch East Indies for a second tour. During the voyage, she met her second husband. She then withdrew for almost twenty years from the theatre and film worlds. In the mid-1930s, van Meeteren began acting again, and played a role in Suikerfreule. In 1936, she also founded a film school that would help prepare beginning actors for a film career. Some of her students appeared in the unfinished feature film Zomerzotheid. At the end of the 1940s, she finally retired from the stage.

A handwritten 1958 note from Van Meeteren says, ‘My memories as a film star from 1912-1915’.