MONIQUE VAN DE VEN: FROM HOLLAND, WITH AMBITION

“I’d have to say yes, I’m jealous of Meryl Streep. As much for her accents as her acting. Now when they want a foreigner, they go to her, not to us.”

That’s Monique van de Ven talking, one of Holland’s top actresses and co-star of the Netherlands’ official entry for the Oscars, “The Assault.”

Van de Ven, who is fluent in English, lives here with her cinematographer husband Jan de Bont, who photographed “The Jewel of the Nile” and “Ruthless People” and is working on “Slammer” with Madonna.

And having been a major name in Holland for 15 years, what she wants--no surprise--is a good role here.

The kind. . . .?

The kind that Meryl Streep gets.

“When they were set to make ‘Out of Africa,’ (director) Sydney Pollack asked to see me in London,” Van de Ven said this week. “But what chance had I against Meryl? And when I finally saw the film (in which Streep played Danish baroness Karen Blixen, who wrote under the name Isak Dinesen), I had to admit her accent was faultless.

“Me, jealous? Terribly. I suppose that’s why so few European actresses now work here anymore. Meryl gets all the roles.”

There is, presumably, no answer to this. If she loses her accent completely, Van de Ven becomes just another good actress competing for roles here. If she doesn’t, she’s competing against people like Streep.

“Fortunately, I can always work back in Holland,” she said. “I can make a good living there. And it’s a great city, Amsterdam. There the big producer in his Jaguar still goes to the same cafe as the poor actor on his bike.”

Holland makes about a dozen movies a year. “But they’re getting more expensive now. ‘The Assault’ cost $2 1/2 million; that’s a lot for us.”

The fact that you can make as good a movie as “The Assault” for that kind of money will no doubt have some producers here jibbering with frustration. For this complex story, concerning a man’s struggle to accept the massacre of his family during the final days of the German occupation of Holland, is splendidly cast and directed by Fons Rademakers.

“It’s because nobody there gets paid the kind of money they do here,” said Van de Ven, who was picked straight from grammar school by director Paul Verhoeven to star opposite Rutger Hauer in “Turkish Delight” in 1972.

“I was paid $2,000 for making that,” she said. “I thought it was a fortune.”

When she first moved here two years ago, Van de Ven said, she thinks she was too picky. “I’d been spoiled in Holland. There I’d just say yes or no to offers. I started doing that here, which was wrong. Here I must make myself known.”

To that end, she will be seen in “Tonight’s the Night,” directed by Bobby Roth and airing on ABC Feb. 2.

“I like it here,” she said, “and I want to work in Hollywood. (Holland’s) Rutger Hauer did it. Now it’s my turn.”

QUOTE: From Australian director Bruce Beresford: “I don’t think you ever know if you’re making a good movie or a bad movie. . . .”