A native of Amsterdam, van Houten, a white-hot star of stage and screen at home (where her hits, clothed and unclothed, include Passion Fruit and Suzy Q), has reason to be frank about film nudity. Her new international star-making movie, Black Book, is a tough yet strangely sexualised Second World War epic set in the Netherlands and made by that master of leering eroticism Paul Verhoeven (Basic Instinct, Showgirls).

Here, as a Jewish Resistance fighter in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, van Houten is put through a series of tortuous personal trials that include getting her top ripped off, sleeping with Nazis, getting her top ripped off, singing for Nazis, getting her top ripped off and finally being lathered in human excrement and brutally sprayed with a powerhose that, yes, accidentally rips her top off.

Van Houten explains, however, that in the original script her character was actually male (“although he didn’t have to sleep with any Nazis,” she jokes). But when the sexual provocateur Verhoeven was presented with the possibility of changing the central character’s gender, he became intrigued. “He was immediately fascinated with the idea of it being a woman. It gave him much more scope in terms of story, and indeed it allowed him to play with this sexual thing as well. And, of course, he’s always fascinated with that.”

On set, the relationship between the director and the actress was intimate, paternalistic and always friendly, says van Houten, although the experience gave her an insight into the director’s unique conceptual relationship with women. Whether they’re femmes fatales, strippers or Resistance fighters, Verhoeven’s instinct, she says, basic or otherwise, is simply to turn his leading ladies into glamorous icons. “I think that somewhere he’s just still this little boy under the sheets, looking through magazines of women,” she says. “He’s like that, a little. He’s afraid, and he adores them at the same time. And I think a lot of men can identify with that.”

She adds modestly, by way of a caveat, that she does not see herself as a screen icon. Well, not yet anyway. “I’m not Paul Verhoeven’s new woman. I’m not the next Sharon Stone. I always just saw the film as a great lead part. And in the Netherlands, where the film industry is so small, this is like the biggest challenge that you could ever have.”

Her performance, unsurprisingly, has been attracting rave reviews — the trade magazine Variety typically cooed: “Van Houten throws herself into the part of a lifetime, with a face that can spin on a dime between fear, defiance, caprice and caring.”

The daughter of a journalist father and broadcaster mother, van Houten says that she was brought up from an early age on a diet of “difficult films”, such as Abel Gance’s Napoleon (1927) and D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916). In the 1980s, though, she became hooked on John Huston’s screechy musical Annie, the joy of which sent her racing straight into stage school in Amsterdam.

“I still get a shiver down my spine when I hear the first few bars of Tomorrow,’” she says.

Her first professional performance was also in Amsterdam, treading the boards in 1997 in Brecht’s Threepenny Opera. She still does theatre, and only last year finished a local run as Catherine in David Auburn’s smash hit Proof. She wasn’t impressed by Gwyneth Paltrow’s screen version, by the way (“For the first half of the film I was like, ‘Hang on! I was better than this!’ ”).

She says that she prefers stage acting to screen acting, and that the former is a chance to immerse yourself totally in a character for two hours, while the latter is simply stolen moments of performance at various levels of embarrassment. But she concedes that the international reception that awaits Black Book (it is scheduled to open in America in March) has made a timely trip into the Hollywoodian spotlight almost mandatory.

“The time is right for me now,” she says. “In another six years everybody’s going to have to put Botox in me before they even consider offering me work. I don’t want to have to do that.”

She looks around at the clientele in the members bar and then comments, almost sotto voce: “That’s why I like England so much. People don’t have to be so pretty.”

A country of nice yet ugly people? “It’s true!” she chuckles. “It’s not so glamorous over here. Look at a film like Secrets and Lies. I like it so much that a big fat man with a strange face can have the leading part. And when you are ugly, and you’re an actor, you’ll always know that in the end it was about the acting and nothing else.”

But you’re not exactly dog rough yourself. “Yeah,” she says, pointing casually to her face. “But wait till I wipe all this off!” Van Houten is currently dating her fellow rising Euro-star Sebastian Koch, who plays the seductive SS Officer Müntze in Black Book. They met on set. She fell hard. “There are definitely certain scenes, if you look close, where I’m blushing like an idiot.”

She’s filming another movie right now, a romantic comedy in the style of Love Actually and, set in the Netherlands. After that, she says, she’s calling a halt to all projects until Black Book opens in America.

She’s not being cut-throat about it, she says, or even super-ambitious. She’s just being realistic. “I did what I can in the Netherlands,” she adds. “I’m going for the adventure now.”

Where are they now? Verhoeven’s babes

Sharon Stone
First spotted Putting a gun to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s head in Verhoeven’s Total Recall (1990), and putting femme fatalities into his Basic Instinct (1992).
Last seen Putting a torch to her reputation in Basic Instinct 2 (2006).

Elizabeth Berkley
First spotted Wearing strategically placed body glitter in Verhoeven’s camp classic Showgirls (1995).
Last seen Bit parts in television shows such as Law & Order.

Denise Richards
First spotted Piloting a giant spacecraft through a storm of insects in Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers (1997). She was a scientist Bond babe in The World is Not Enough (1999).
Last seen Going through a messy divorce from Charlie Sheen last October.

Jeanne Tripplehorn
First spotted As the police psychologist in Basic Instinct. Then as Tom Cruise’s wife in The Firm.
Last seen In controversial polygamy-based American TV drama Big Love.

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