Max von Sydow, the great Swedish blonde actor who made a striking appearance in American films, but who identified himself above all with the signature work of a Swedish compatriot, the director Ingmar Bergman, died. He was 90 years old.
His wife, Catherine von Sydow, confirmed the death in a statement sent by email. The cause and date of his death were not released at the family’s request, said Lesley Duff, one of Mr. von Sydow’s agents, in a telephone interview.
Mr. von Sydow, widely hailed as one of the best actors of his generation, became an older pop culture star in his later years, appearing in a movie “Star Wars” in 2015 as well as in the sixth season of the fantasy HBO – adventure series “Game of Thrones”. He even lent his deep and rich voice to “The Simpsons”.
By that time, he had become a colloquially austere presence in popular films like “The Exorcist” by William Friedkin, “Minority Report” by Steven Spielberg, “Hannah and Her Sisters” by Woody Allen and, more recently, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly ”by Julian Schnabel. “
But for moviegoers around the world, he was most faithfully associated with Bergman.
If ever an actor was born to inhabit the world according to Bergman, it is Mr. von Sydow. Angular and gangly at 6 feet 3 inches, with a gaunt face and hooded glazed blue eyes, he not only radiated power, but he also recorded a deep feeling of northern anxiety, helping to give flesh to the often dark, hopeful and sometimes comical vision of Bergman. of the human condition in classics like “The Seventh Seal” and “The Virgin Source”.
In “The Seventh Seal” (1958), Mr. von Sydow played Antonius Block, an endearing medieval knight who returns from crusades in his homeland ravaged by the plague to meet the figure of severe death, pale ghostly and black hooded, played by Bengt Ekerot. To ward off the inevitable, Block defies death to a game of chess, and in the long intervals between movements, he searches the countryside in search of the slightest human goodness.
The two sinister figures arched on a chessboard in a desolate landscape of the north of the country have created an unforgettable cinematic image, both imitated and parodied. But the sustained Hollywood celebrity escaped Mr. von Sydow, despite his promising introduction to a large audience in the main role of George Stevens’ biblical epic “The Greatest Story Ever Told”, published in 1965.
Although this film turned out to be less than a blockbuster, Mr. von Sydow’s performance as Jesus was good enough to bring a stream of offers in his own way. However, he often found himself as a stereotypical villain, thanks to his imposing physique, his strong features and his Scandinavian accent.
“I wish I could have a wider choice of roles in American productions,” he said. told The New York Times in 1983, “the kind of roles I get in Europe.” Unfortunately, he said, American film producers “only offer you exact copies of the roles you have successfully played before.”
There were exceptions. In one of his most commercially successful films, “The Exorcist” (1973), an adaptation of the bestseller by William Peter Blatty, Mr. von Sydow played a resolutely determined Jesuit priest summoned to the final scenes of the film to save a girl possessed by Satan.
But it was only in the last few years that it could become widely known in American films. In “Hannah and Her Sisters” (1986), he was the youngest sister’s possessive lover, played by Barbara Hershey. In the science fiction thriller “Minority Report” (2002), he was the cold-blooded boss of Tom Cruise, the director of a police force that uses telepathic powers to stop crimes before they are committed.
Mr. von Sydow obtained his first Oscar nomination in 1988 – some 40 years after his film debut – for his work in “Pelle le conquérant”. A Danish film directed by Bille August, it told the story of Lasse (M. von Sydow), a widowed Swedish worker who took his young son, Pelle, to Denmark at the turn of the century in search of a life better, only to meet even more difficult moments.
There were other highlights at the end of his career, including “Hamsun” (1997), in which Mr. von Sydow immersed himself in the tangled personality of the Norwegian novelist Knut Hamsun, Nobel laureate, whose age and ego led him to become a tool of the Nazis during World War II.
In the late 80s, he played the brief role of village elder Lor San Tekka in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” and as the enigmatic three-eyed crow in season six of “Game of Thrones”, he had, as a critic Terrence Rafferty wrote in The Atlantic in December 2015, “the kind of end of career that prominent film actors tend to make, appearing for a scene or two in commercial stuff that needs a touch of gravity, and receiving, as famous old actors do, the honor of “last billing”. “
He also received a new round of recognition. “For an important part of his six decades on screen,” wrote Mr. Rafferty, “he has been the greatest living actor.”
Mr. von Sydow received his second Oscar nomination as a supporting actor in 2011 for his performance in the otherwise wild film “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close”. In which he played the silent companion of a boy whose father died on 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. (In a handwritten note to the Academy expressing his gratitude, he wrote: “I don’t know what to say.”)
Perhaps no role has been as emotionally charged for him as the one he played in the French-language film “The diving bell and the butterfly” (2007): a frail and elderly man whose defenses emotional collapse when he learns that his son’s paralytic stroke is irreversible. The role reminded him of his relationship with his own father and all the unresolved issues between them, he told The New York Times Magazine in 2008.
“It was very difficult for me to get rid of my emotions after making this film,” he said.
Carl Adolf von Sydow was born on April 10, 1929 in Lund, in the south of Sweden. His father was a university professor, his mother a teacher. He attended Lund Cathedral School, where he learned English at a young age, and began his acting career in an amateur theater group which he founded with friends.
He is said to have adopted the name Max from the star performer in a flea circus which he saw while serving in the body of the Swedish quartermaster.
After his military service, he studied at the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm, from 1948 to 1951, and made his screen debut in “Only a Mother” (1949), the drama of Alf Sjoberg on a woman raising a brood of children while working in virtual bondage in a Sweden where classes reign.
In 1951, while still in Stockholm, Mr. von Sydow married Kerstin Olin, an actress, with whom he had two sons. The marriage ended in divorce after 45 years.
He began his long association with Bergman in 1955, when Mr. von Sydow moved to the city of Malmö in southern Sweden and joined the municipal theater of Malmö, with which Bergman was associated.
Over the next few years, Mr. von Sydow appeared in many Bergman films, becoming an important member of what was essentially the director’s repertoire society, whether in lower roles (in “Wild Strawberries” and ” Brink of Life “) or in main roles (in” The Magician “,” Through a dark glass “and” The virgin source “).
In “The Virgin Spring” (1960), he plays a wealthy man whose daughter is raped and murdered by two local shepherds. When he discovers the identity of the killers, he plans methodically then executes a bloody revenge.
Some 20 years later, thinking about how Bergman had shaped his performance as an avenging father, Mr. von Sydow said: “Rabies slowly builds up in him until he explodes and finally kills – it is an accumulation which is long and slow and meticulous. Bergman uses a lot of time and thought of building an emotion. He processes it. You think the explosion will come, but no, and the tension exhausts you. “
In the early 1960s, Mr. von Sydow received offers from Hollywood and turned them down, saying he was quite satisfied with his work in Sweden. Then he was offered the role of Jesus in “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” and he went to Hollywood, embarking on an international career.
In 1966, in “Hawaii”, based on the novel by James A. Michener and directed by George Roy Hill, Mr. von Sydow gave a nuanced performance as a young minister who came to Hawaii in the 19th century with his wife (Julie Andrews) to seek converts among native islanders.
More generally, however, and to his growing frustration, he played the villain – a neo-Nazi in “The Quiller Memorandum” (1966), a power-hungry Russian in “The Kremlin Letter” (1970), a Fedora carrying an assassin in “Three Days of the Condor” (1975), the supernatural emperor Ming the Merciless in the cartoon “Flash Gordon” (1980), the sworn enemy Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the James Bond film “Never Say Never Again” ( 1983).
More difficult roles awaited him in Sweden, and in the late 1960s he returned to make another series of films with Bergman and another Swedish master director, Jan Troell. He appeared in Bergman’s “Hour of the Wolf” (1968), “Shame” (1968), “The Passion of Anna” (1969) and “The Touch” (1971) and then performed with Liv Ullmann in “The Emigrants ”. (1971) and “The New Land” (1972), Mr. Troell’s two-part saga of 19th century Swedish settlers in the United States.
Mr. von Sydow made his Broadway debut in 1977 as the star of “The Night of the Tribes,” a play by Per Olov Enquist on Swedish writer August Strindberg. Despite a cast that also included Eileen Atkins and Bibi Andersson (another pillar of Bergman), the production lasted less than two weeks.
Broadway theatergoers had another brief encounter with Mr. von Sydow in 1981, when he played with Anne Bancroft in “Duet for One”, the drama of Tom Kempinski on cellist Jacqueline du Pre, whose career has was interrupted by multiple sclerosis. Mr. von Sydow played the kind therapist who tries to help him overcome his depression.
This play, too, had only a short run, but there were better things to come for Mr. von Sydow, almost all on film.
In another role with psychological depth, in “The Flight of the Eagle” (1983), directed by Mr. Troell, he was the leader of an unhappy group of explorers who try to fly over the North Pole in a balloon hydrogen. In The Times, Vincent Canby described the Oscar-nominated film for Best Foreign Language Film as “so good it makes you want to know more.”
Despite all of her ties to the country of her birth and to Bergman, Sweden has become distant from Mr. von Sydow. In the 1980s, although he owned a summer house on an island in the Baltic Sea, he lived in Rome. Her sons attended American universities.
“I have nowhere to call home,” he told The Times. “I feel like I have lost my Swedish roots. It’s funny because I have worked in so many places that now I feel at home in many places. But Sweden is the only place where I feel less and less at home. “
Mr. von Sydow remained among a selected group of actors for having formed symbiotic relationships with the directors, in which one helps the other to reach a high artistic level. He found soul mates in two filmmakers. One was Mr. Troell, who directed him in seven films and wanted him to take the lead in “The Last Sentence,” his acclaimed 2012 film. He refused, said Mr. Troell, because at 85 years old, he felt “too old”. (The role went to Jesper Christensen, 19 years younger.)
The other, of course, was Bergman. Mr. von Sydow recalled his last conversation with the director, died in Sweden in 2007 at 89 years old: “He said:” Max, you were the first and the best Stradivarius I have ever had. “”
Alex Marshall contributed to the report.