Renee Soutendijk Is a Doctor and a Robot in ‘Eve of Destruction’

First, Dutch actor Rutger Hauer played a charismatic android in “Blade Runner.” A few years later, Dutch director Paul Verhoeven caused a sensation with “RoboCop.” And now Dutch actress Renee Soutendijk has gone the robotic route in “Eve of Destruction.”

“There’s something about the Dutch and robots,” she says, laughing.

Soutendijk plays a dual role in the action-thriller that stars Gregory Hines: She’s a brilliant doctor and a look-alike runaway robot that has a nuclear device hidden inside it.

Though Soutendijk has dazzled critics and art-house movie fans here in such films as Verhoeven’s “Spetters” and “The Fourth Man,” it’s been nearly impossible for her to dazzle American movie producers.

“Every time I was up for a big part in a well-known film,” she says, “it always fell through because I didn’t have a big enough name. This was a big, big challenge for me. This was the first time I played an American and it’s two parts.”

Still, Soutendijk was a hard sell. She was the first choice of director Duncan Gibbons, but “Nelson Entertainment, who came up with the money, said, ‘Why do we need a foreign actress for an American part who has a very difficult last name to pronounce and who has done nothing big in this country? We are not going to pay for the screen test.’ ”

So Gibbons did. “After they saw the test,” Soutendijk says, “I was hired.”

After completing “Eve of Destruction” in L.A. last summer, Soutendijk has officially moved here. “I must admit I miss Amsterdam,” she says, “but workwise there is a lot more happening here. I always wanted the ability to choose things that can improve my own qualities as an actress and mainly that’s the reason I am here. When you are not working, it’s a lot harder (living here). It’s harder to get good friends here. Sometimes it’s very lonely.”