Max Von Sydow Biography
Born: April 10, 1929
Standing over six feet-four inches tall, the bony Swedish actor Max von Sydow spent much of his acting career portraying stern, oppressive characters. Born to a family of academics in Lund, Sweden, von Sydow studied at the Royal Dramatic School in Stockholm, where he made his screen debut in Only a Mother and married his first wife, actress Christina Olin. In 1956, he moved to Malmö and met director Ingmar_Bergman at the Malmo Municipal Theatre. After starring in The_Seventh_Seal, von Sydow went on to star in more than a dozen films with Bergman, including Wild_Strawberries, Virgin_Spring, Through a Glass Darkly, and Winter_Light. He worked almost exclusively with Bergman's acting company until 1965, when he took the role as Jesus in George_Stevens' epic The_Greatest_Story_Ever_Told. This part opened the door to American films, where he was often typecast in strong, humorless roles, like the rigid missionary Abner Hale in Hawaii. In the '70s, he went back to Sweden to work with Bergman in four more films and appeared opposite frequent co-star Liv_Ullmann in Jan_Troell's two-part saga The_Emigrants and The_New_Land. It wasn't until 1973 that he made his first big Hollywood blockbuster with the role of Father Merrin The_Exorcist, which he reprised in Exorcist II: The Heretic. Moving to Rome in the '80s, von Sydow had a fun role as Ming the Merciless in Flash_Gordon, played Barbara Hershey's intense artist boyfriend in Hannah and Her Sisters, and received his first Oscar nomination and numerous other awards for his work in Pelle the Conqueror (1988). After making his directorial debut with Katinka, he worked in several theater projects and a couple of biblical TV miniseries (Sampson & Delilah and Quo_Vadis). It was during this time that he was cast as the devil in the Stephen_King film adaptation Needful_Things, marking von Sydow as the only actor to play both God and Satan. He also appeared in Judge_Dredd and Wim_Wenders' Until the End of the World. He continued acting sporadically in Hollywood for What_Dreams_May_Come and Snow Falling on Cedars. Moving on to the international circuit, he appeared in Intacto (Spain), Vercingetorix (France), and Non ho Sonno (Italy). In 2002, he co-starred with Tom_Cruise for the Steven_Spielberg blockbuster Minority_Report.
He continued to work steadily throughout the decade in projects as diverse as Rush Hour 3, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and Shutter Island. Coming nearly sixty years after his earliest film work, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close earned the venerable actor his second Oscar nomination - a Best Supporting Actor nod for his portrayal of a mute grandfather. Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi
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