Maarten Spanjer

Martinus Raphaël Spanjer, always known as Maarten, was born in Amsterdam on 24 October 1952. He grew up in and around the Retiefstraat in Amsterdam-Oost, in a Catholic family with eight children. De Volkskrant recalled that the family spent its holidays in Spain and that as a boy he had a great love for Ajax and for the Italian actress Sophia Loren. He later looked back on these years in his book Geluk is een herinnering.

Spanjer's first film roles came in the mid 1970s, in Liefde en lange vingers and Heb medelij, Jet! (both 1975) and Pastorale 1943 (1978). At the end of the 1970s he became known on television through the VARA football programme Voetbal '80, which ran from the 1979 to 1980 season until 1986. There he played comic characters, most famously Drs. Vijfje, the football ombudsman, and presented the item Het Miskende Talent. He also played the character Beun de Haas in television advertising, a role he revived for the motor trade association BOVAG in 2011.

His breakthrough as a film actor came in 1980 with Paul Verhoeven's Spetters, in which he played the motocross rider Hans, one of three young friends who fall for the snack bar owner Fientje, played by Renée Soutendijk. Television roles followed in De Fabriek (1981), Laat maar zitten (1989 to 1991), Uit de school geklapt (1993), In voor- en tegenspoed (1997) and Schoon goed (1999). He voiced a role in the Dutch version of the animated film Chicken Run (2000), played Gerben Zonderland in the Kameleon films De schippers van de Kameleon (2003) and Kameleon 2 (2005), and in 2006 starred as the detective Martin Boks in the police series Boks, broadcast by Talpa. He also played the football coach Rinus Michels on television.

His greatest television success was Taxi, first broadcast by NCRV on 19 July 1993. Disguised as a taxi driver, Spanjer chatted with passengers while a hidden camera filmed them, and the footage was broadcast only if they agreed. In the 1994 to 1995 season the programme drew an average of 2.7 million viewers. Its best known episode showed Rijk de Gooyer, a close friend of Spanjer, throwing the Golden Calf he had just won at the Netherlands Film Festival out of the car window. In 1995 Taxi won a Golden Rose at the Montreux television festival. After four seasons Spanjer left, because too many passengers recognised him. His fame also led to a series of KPN advertisements with De Gooyer.

Spanjer was a writer as well as a performer. He wrote for the satirical student weekly Propria Cures, where he became involved in a public dispute with Harry de Winter, and published more than ten books, including Spanjer in stukken (2016), a collection of short stories and anecdotes, and Geluk is een herinnering. In 2018 he appeared with Arno Smit as a narrator in the music theatre show Rot op met die geraniums, about the 1950s and 1960s, and from September 2019 he told stories and shared memories in the Beatshow with the singers Rudy Bennett and Theo van Es. In his last months he wrote a weekly column for De Telegraaf.

Spanjer's partner was Monique Waterham, who was with him when he died. He loved football, as a boy he was devoted to Ajax, and he counted the actor Rijk de Gooyer among his good friends. He spoke openly about death in his final years, telling De Telegraaf in August 2026 that he was not afraid of the end because he had always seen life as a strange joke.

In 2025 Spanjer was diagnosed with bladder and prostate cancer. He had a major operation in which his bladder and prostate were removed, and for a long time he kept his illness to himself. In an interview with De Telegraaf at the end of August 2026 he spoke about it publicly and said he still felt well, and from then on he wrote a weekly column for the paper about his experiences as a patient, including wry observations from hospital waiting rooms.

According to his partner Monique Waterham, his health declined very quickly in his final two weeks after new metastases appeared. He died in the night of Friday 16 to Saturday 17 October 2026 in a hospice in Ouderkerk aan de Amstel, aged 73, in her arms. De Telegraaf reported the death on the morning of 17 October and Waterham confirmed it to the ANP news agency. NOS, NRC, de Volkskrant, RTL Boulevard and NU.nl all reported it the same morning. No funeral details had been made public when the death was reported.

Spanjer is remembered above all for Taxi, which with its hidden camera and his dry humour drew millions of viewers in the 1990s and won an international prize, and whose ride with Rijk de Gooyer became the programme's best known moment. As an actor he is remembered for Spetters and, by a younger generation, for the Kameleon films. His character Drs. Vijfje lived on in the name of a student futsal club in Groningen. In his last months he turned his writing to his own illness, keeping the light touch that had marked his work.