Do we like them?Do we like Paul Verhoeven?
Our score: 7 out of 10. No harmful words or campaigns of his own turned up, but one contested dispute with a former star and thin evidence on good works keep it short of a nine.
Paul Verhoeven is the Dutch director who gave Hollywood RoboCop, Total Recall and Basic Instinct, then went home to Europe and kept stirring the pot. His films have always poked at sex, violence and religion, and he has cheerfully copped the backlash for decades. Nothing on this page is about a newly burning scandal: I found nothing confirmed and recent from a reputable outlet.
The biggest stoush on his record is with Sharon Stone. In her 2021 memoir she said she was told the famous interrogation scene would not show anything, and that she only saw the shot at a screening. Verhoeven denied it, saying his memory “is radically different from Sharon's memory” and that the two of them devised the scene together. They are, he says, still on friendly terms. It is her word against his, with no court involved, so we leave it as contested.
On the harm test, nothing turned up. He has said he “had no intention of making an activist movie” with Benedetta, a 17th-century story of a love affair between two nuns, and the film itself puts a lesbian relationship at the centre. Religious protesters picketed the film in New York, but being picketed by protesters is not a mark against him. I found no campaigning against trans or LGBTQ+ people, and no climate or migrant slurs.
On women, the criticism is about how his films show sex and nudity, which is a matter of taste rather than conduct. He says the actresses on Benedetta were in control of their intimate scenes, in a set built on trust, and that “I would never do anything they didn't want to do.” That is his account, and Virginie Efira has said he warned her up front about the number of sex scenes. It sits as a fair, if unproven, picture of how he works.
On religion he is blunt, saying the medieval Catholic Church was “horrible for hundreds of years” but “is not Jesus.” That is criticism of an institution's conduct, not of believers, and it is what you would expect from a director who calls sexuality “the essence of life.” Whether you find that provocative or just honest is a matter of taste.
The honest gap is the good stuff. He has plenty of honours from film festivals, but I could not open a page on charity or kind acts, so the record there is thin. That is why this is a seven, not a nine. Based on what I could read, he is a provocateur rather than a harm-pusher, and one we would be comfortable cheering for.