Along the way, he made the acquaintance of someone who would later propel him to stardom, director Ingmar Bergman, who was the chief director of the municipal theater in Malmo. After graduating, he began honing his skills in repertory theatre all around Sweden in a variety of roles.
Though his parents wanted him to study law, von Sydow went ahead with acting when he attended the Royal Dramatic Theatre - or as it was known in Sweden, Dramaten - where he studied the craft from 1948-1951. The young lad was immediately taken by its magic, leading to him and his friends forming their own company where they performed all the classics. But when he was 14, a modern theatre was built in nearby Malmo. With no theatre in the area, von Sydow absorbed novels in his youth. He showed no signs of slowing down even into his 80s, appearing in Martin Scorsese's "Shutter Island" (2010), an episode of "The Simpsons" (Fox 1990- ), and "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" (2015).īorn on Apin Lund, Sweden, von Sydow was raised by his father, Carl, a professor of Scandinavian and Irish folklore at the Royal University, and his mother, Greta, a school teacher. His career spanned long after that triumph, including films ranging from medical drama "Awakenings" (1990) to science fiction thriller "Minority Report" (2002) to indie character study "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" (2007). Following this, he was able to branch out and explore a variety of compelling roles, which culminated in an Academy Award nomination for his performance in "Pelle the Conqueror" (1988), which only confirmed the notion of von Sydow being Sweden's modern-day Laurence Olivier. He finally had a breakthrough playing the titular role in "The Exorcist" (1973), playing the immortal Father Merrin in a film that forever cemented von Sydow into cinema history. When von Sydow crossed the Atlantic to appear in Hollywood films, however, he was initially consigned to playing stern, unsympathetic characters. The actor and director continued their collaboration for the next several years, churning out complicated and often surreal films like "The Magician" (1958) and "The Virgin Spring" (1960) that earned international accolades and awards. Both von Sydow and Bergman triumphantly emerged onto the international film scene with "The Seventh Seal" (1957), an existential meditation on death that was long after considered to be one of the greatest foreign films ever made. After his training at Stockholm's Royal Dramatic Theatre School, actor Max von Sydow became recognized as his native Sweden's foremost film star, thanks to his long-running collaboration with acclaimed director Ingmar Bergman.
0 kommentar(er)
