#Max von sydow movie
#Max von sydow professional

He also appeared in 1982’s Conan the Barbarian. Reportedly a childhood fan of the comic book, Von Sydow memorably played Ming the Merciless in 1980’s Flash Gordon. He also appeared in the 1974 film Steppenwolf.

#Max von sydow movie

He also played Colonel Kosnov in John Huston’s 1970 movie The Kremlin Letter and worked with the director again on his 1981 POW film Escape to Victory, which starred Sylvester Stallone, Michael Caine, and soccer legend Pelé. Von Sydow won the KCFCC Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Sydney Pollack’s 1975 political thriller Three Days of the Condor. In Hollywood, Von Sydow appeared in the 1966 drama Hawaii, for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award. He starred in Jan Troell’s two-part epic The Emigrants and The New Land. He was nominated for an Oscar nomination for his role in Swedish director Bille August’s 1987 domestic drama Pelle the Conqueror. Von Sydow also appeared onstage in Sweden and worked for other Scandinavian directors. As part of the director’s troupe, which included Liv Ullman, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Ingrid Thulin, Bibi Andersson, and Gunnel Lindblom, Von Sydow appeared in 10 more Bergman films, including Wild Strawberries (1957), The Virgin Spring (1960) Through a Glass Darkly (1961), The Hour of the Wolf (1966), Winter Light (1963), The Passion of Anna (1969), and The Touch (1971). Von Sydow became Bergman’s on-screen alter ego. The movie included the iconic chess match with Death (Bengt Ekerot).

Von Sydow first collaborated with Ingmar Bergman in 1955 on theater productions before he became internationally known for his role as the knight of the Crusades Antonius Block in Bergman’s 1957 film The Seventh Seal. He made his film debut in Only a Mother (1949), directed by Alf Sjöberg, who also cast him in his 1951 adaptation of August Strindberg’s Miss Julie. Von Sydow studied at the Royal Dramatic Theater School in Stockholm, Sweden’s national drama school.

#Max von sydow professional

He chose the professional name Max after seeing a flea circus while he was in the army. His father, Carl Wilhelm von Sydow, was a comparative folklore professor. His mother was Baroness Maria Margareta, a teacher.

Max was born Carl Adolf von Sydow on April 10, 1929, in Lund on the Swedish coast. He also played the devil himself, as shopkeeper Leland Gaunt in the film adaptation of Stephen King’s Needful Things. Von Sydow had the power to compel Satan as Father Merrin in William Friedkin’s 1973 horror classic The Exorcist and Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), directed by John Boorman. This gave him the authority to observe “if Jesus were alive today and saw what they are saying in his name, he would never stop throwing up” in Woody Allen’s 1986 film Hannah and Her Sisters. Von Sydow made his Hollywood debut as Jesus in the 1965 Biblical epic The Greatest Story Ever Told. “It is with a broken heart and with infinite sadness that we have the extreme pain of announcing the departure of Max von Sydow,” his wife, the producer Catherine Brelet, said in a statement. Stage and screen acting legend Max Von Sydow, who starred in The Seventh Seal and appeared in The Exorcist, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Flash Gordon, and Game of Thrones, died on March 8 at the age of 90, according to Variety.