10 Cultural Resolutions For 2009.(actress Carice van Houten on Valkyrie, New Year services of Royal Copenhagen, and portrait artist Martin Kippenberger)

Byline: editor: Valerie Steiker

1. be bold

"My father raised me and my sister with Laurel and Hardy and Buster Keaton," says Carice van Houten, whose heart-shaped face and bottomless gaze suggest the golden age of silent moviesor, perhaps, a future Garbo biopic.

Already a star in her native Holland, the 32-year-old first drew international attention with Paul Verhoeven's 2006 pulp-fest Black Book, bringing a silken ferocity to a Mata Harilike character who seduces the Hague's Gestapo head. That he was played by the debonair German actor Sebastian Koch (star of the Academy Awardwinning The Lives of Others ), van Houten admits, made the task more appealing; in fact, Koch has been her leading man off-screen ever since. "I went to work, and I met my soul mate," she says.

In the Hollywood epic Valkyrie, van Houten returns to the forties to embody the real-life Countess Nina von Stauffenberg, the courageous wife of the German army officer who led a failed plot to kill Hitler. Acting opposite Tom Cruise"My girlfriends were so jealous"she's the film's emotional core. "It takes a lot of strength to say that we're here and we might die, but you have to go for this. Some things are just bigger than life."

MEGAN O'GRADY

2. savor the moment