Ten-year-old Rick Lens shakes his blond hair over his face to get a wind-swept look for the camera while comfortably slouched on a dark blue leather sofa.
He turns and flashes a smile, charming everyone around him with his big blue eyes. “I like being an actor and it’s something I want to do when I grow up,” he said.
Rick is the star of Kauwboy, a Dutch film premiered around the world, which won the inaugural European Young Audience Award earlier this year.
The young actor visited Malta for the weekend as his film was shown at St James Cavalier as part of the week-long arts festival Żigużajg, which comes to an end today.
“It’s about a boy who finds a bird but doesn’t have a good relationship with his father,” he explained through his father Fons.
In the film, he is Jojo, a lively 10-year-old with a difficult home life with a father who is suffering from depression and a mother who is absent. He finds an abandoned baby jackdaw and keeps it – against his father’s wishes. However, through the special friendship he builds with the bird, the wall between him and his father is brought down.
Asked whether he enjoyed acting, Rick’s big blue eyes light up and quickly exclaims “yes, very much” in English. It was not an opportunity that all children had and it was a very good experience, he said. He encouraged everyone to go watch the film, although he said it was not suitable for people under 10. The film was also premiered at his school and his friends really liked it.
“I loved acting with a bird – it was very easy,” he said, nonchalantly. However, he hated the scenes where he had to hit his father.
And how did he decide to choose acting? “His sister was in the spotlight – she is a good singer and he wanted to be in the spotlight too,” his father translated.
Now Rick was relishing the fact that he is more popular than his 14-year-old sister Anouk.