Schoenaerts and Hasselbank: Their Son's Birth, Told with Discretion

In the article that follows, I look at how we choose what to share and what to keep to ourselves around a happy personal event, as a couple. To observe concretely how you communicate with your partner day to day, ScanMyLove, our relationship conversation analysis tool, relies on your real exchanges rather than a simple questionnaire; and if this question, what to say and what to keep quiet in your own relationship, speaks to you, I have designed a couple communication test that lets you take stock of how you express yourselves, listen, and work through disagreement as a pair.

On May 17, 2026, the Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts and his partner, the Brussels DJ Zoey Hasselbank, 34, became parents to a baby boy. The news, confirmed by several Belgian media outlets from both language communities, could have stayed a brief celebrity item. A few days later, however, it led to one of the actor's rare public statements about his private life, and it is that statement, as much as the birth itself, that deserves a closer look.

An International Actor, a Private Life Kept Away from the Spotlight

Born in Antwerp, Matthias Schoenaerts grew up between Brussels and Flanders, bilingual in French and Dutch. His father, Julien Schoenaerts, was himself an actor; he died in 2006. His career went international with striking roles in Rust and Bone (2012, opposite Marion Cotillard), Suite française (2014), The Danish Girl (2015) and A Bigger Splash (2015, opposite Tilda Swinton), a filmography built largely around characters of strong emotional and sensual intensity.

This fame has never come with media exposure of his personal life: Matthias Schoenaerts does not maintain an active personal social media account and had never, until then, spoken publicly about his relationship with Zoey Hasselbank. The couple lives in Pelt, in the Belgian province of Limburg.

A Pregnancy Announced on Social Media, a Birth Confirmed by the Press

According to the Dutch-language Belgian press, the announcement of Zoey Hasselbank's pregnancy came in early 2026, via an Instagram post showing a pregnancy photo alongside an ultrasound image. The birth, on May 17, 2026, was then reported by several Belgian outlets, 7sur7.be and PurePeople on the French-speaking side, the Gazet van Antwerpen (GVA.be), the Nieuwsblad and Nieuws.nl on the Dutch-speaking side, in converging terms: a couple, a first child, no mention of a breakup or a rumor.

The Name Ulysse, and a Sentence About What Stays Private

The couple's child was named Ulysse Emmanuel Julien Schoenaerts. The third name, Julien, pays tribute to the actor's father, also an actor, who died twenty years earlier. This is a fact made public by Matthias Schoenaerts himself, in an interview given to 7sur7.be and published on May 31, 2026.

In that same interview, the actor made three statements that sketch, in his own words, how he is going through this event:

"I'm of course over the moon, what can I say?"

"But I don't want to go on about it, because I feel it's on too precious a level."

"Every time I have to go somewhere, it makes me nauseous, I so don't want to leave Pelt."

These three sentences are enough to document a clear stance, expressed by the person himself: joy displayed without hesitation, an explicit choice not to elaborate further, and a described attachment to the family home. Nothing more is established by the available sources, and nothing more needs to be.

Choosing a Name, Keeping a Memory Alive

Choosing a name in tribute to a deceased parent is a gesture found in many families, whatever the fame of the people involved. Becoming a parent frequently reactivates the memory of one's own parents, particularly when one of them held an important professional or symbolic place, here, a father who was himself an actor. Carrying that memory in one's child's name is a way, documented in many families, of letting an old bereavement and a recent birth coexist without either erasing the other, a general mechanism that allows no conclusion about what Matthias Schoenaerts experienced inwardly on the subject. It is a mechanism I develop in my book Nos failles archaïques, on how an old bereavement continues to shape emotional choices long after the loss itself.

Why Some Couples Choose to Say Little

Matthias Schoenaerts's reaction, saying he is happy while explicitly refusing to elaborate, illustrates a phenomenon broader than his own case, which communication science describes as communication privacy management: the way a person, alone or as part of a couple, consciously draws a line between what becomes shared information and what remains kept information. Many people, in the media spotlight or not, distinguish what they agree to share about a happy event from what they prefer to keep to themselves. This choice is not necessarily avoidance: it can also be a way of preserving the emotional weight of a moment by keeping it from becoming a subject of outside commentary. This general mechanism says nothing about Matthias Schoenaerts's personal reasons in particular; it only places his statement within an already documented framework on how couples regulate what they make public.

In a couple, this question rarely arises in such public terms, but it almost always arises in private: what do we tell family, colleagues, social networks about a major personal event, a birth, a move, a couple's decision? And what do we keep, by mutual agreement or not, to ourselves? The answer varies from one couple to another, and there is no universal norm for the "right" amount of sharing. This is precisely what I address in my book Sauver son couple, on the kind of communication that lets two partners agree, explicitly or not, on this boundary between public and private.

To go further: Deciding together what to share and what to keep to yourselves, without either person feeling wronged or sidelined, is a frequent point of friction in couples. My book Sauver son couple offers a concrete method, inspired by Gottman and CBT, to put this kind of disagreement on the table without letting it fester. Read an excerpt

Also Worth Reading

• Couple after kids: rediscovering lost closeness

FAQ

Who is Matthias Schoenaerts's partner?

His partner is Zoey Hasselbank, a 34-year-old DJ from Brussels. The couple lives in Pelt, in the Belgian province of Limburg.

Do Matthias Schoenaerts and Zoey Hasselbank have children?

Yes. Their first child, a son named Ulysse Emmanuel Julien Schoenaerts, was born on May 17, 2026.

Why this name for his son?

The third name, Julien, pays tribute to the actor's father, Julien Schoenaerts, himself an actor, who died in 2006, a fact made public by Matthias Schoenaerts himself in an interview given to 7sur7.be.

Does Matthias Schoenaerts often speak about his private life?

No. The actor does not maintain an active personal social media account and rarely speaks about his life as a couple. The May 31, 2026 interview is one of his rare public statements on the subject.