He finally gave in when George Stevens begged him to play Jesus in his 225-minute epic The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965).
Von Sydow refused offers of work outside Sweden, even the title role in the first James Bond movie, Dr No (1962), though two decades later he played the evil genius Blofeld to Sean Connery’s Bond in Never Say Never Again, 1983. In Through a Glass Darkly (1961), he was the anguished husband of Harriet Andersson, watching his wife lapsing into insanity, and in Winter Light (1962), he was a man terrified of nuclear annihilation. It was back to medieval Sweden in The Virgin Spring (1960), with Von Sydow as the vengeful father of a girl who has been raped and murdered. As Vogler, a 19th-century mesmerist and magician, Von Sydow embodies admirably the part-charlatan, part-messiah character. He had a small part in Wild Strawberries (1957), and was rather peripheral in Brink of Life (1957), as Eva Dahlbeck’s husband, waiting calmly for his wife to have a baby (which she loses), but was central in The Face (1958, later known as The Magician). Max von Sydow, left, and Mathieu Amalric in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, 2007įollowing The Seventh Seal, Von Sydow played in six sombre films in a row for Bergman he was quite content to play supporting roles when asked. After graduating, Von Sydow, who had married Christina Olin in 1951, joined the Municipal theatre in Helsingborg before moving to Malmö, which resulted in the significant meeting with Bergman. From 1948 to 1951, Von Sydow attended the acting school at the Royal Dramatic theatre in Stockholm while still a student there, he had small parts in two films directed by Alf Sjöberg, Only a Mother (1949) and Miss Julie (1951). He attended a Catholic school before doing his military service. His father, Carl Wilhelm, was an ethnologist and professor of comparative folklore at the university of Lund his mother, Maria Margareta (nee Rappe), was a school teacher. He was born Carl Adolf Von Sydow – later taking the name Max – to an academic family in Lund, southern Sweden. In the same company were Gunnar Björnstrand, Ingrid Thulin, Bibi Andersson and Gunnel Lindblom, who, with Von Sydow, were to become part of the Bergman repertory company of the screen. From 1956 to 1958, for Bergman, Von Sydow played Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Peer in Peer Gynt, Alceste in The Misanthrope and Faust in Urfaust. Photograph: Sportsphoto/Allstar/Cinetext CollectionĪlthough it was the actor’s first film for Bergman, they had worked together at the Municipal theatre in Malmö on several plays and would continue to do so between films. Max von Sydow and Linda Blair in The Exorcist, 1973.
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