Max von Sydow

Max von Sydow was born Carl Adolf von Sydow on April 10, 1929 in Lund, Skåne, Sweden, to a middle-class family. He was the son of Baroness Maria Margareta (Rappe), a teacher, and Carl Wilhelm von Sydow, an ethnologist and folklore professor. His surname traces back to his partial German ancestry. When he was in high school, he and a few fellow students, including Yvonne Lombard, started a theatre club which encouraged his interest in acting.

After conscription, he began to study at the Royal Dramatic Theatre's acting school (1948-1951), together with Lars Ekborg, Margaretha Krook and Ingrid Thulin.

His first role was as Nils the crofter in Alf Sjöberg's Bara en mor (1949). After graduation, he worked at the city theatres in Norrköping and Malmö.

His work in the movies by Ingmar Bergman (especially The Seventh Seal (1957), including the iconic scenes in which he plays chess with Death) made him well-known internationally, and he started to get offers from abroad.

He was offered the title role in the first James Bond film Dr. No (1962), which went to Joseph Wiseman.

His career abroad began with him playing Jesus in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965); Hawaii (1966) and The Quiller Memorandum (1966).

Since then, his career includes very different kind of characters, like Karl Oskar Nilsson in The Emigrants (1971); Father Lankester Merrin in The Exorcist--The Version You've Never Seen Before (1973); Joubert the assassin in Three Days of the Condor (1975), Emperor Ming in Flash Gordon (1980); the villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the Never Say Never Again (1983); Liet-Kynes in Dune (1984) the artist Frederick in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986); Lassefar in Pelle the Conqueror (1987), for which he received his first Academy Award nomination; Dr.

In his career, he had played Jesus, Satan, and was also the title character in the horror classic The Exorcist--The Version You've Never Seen Before (1973).

Had four sons, Clas S. von Sydow and Henrik von Sydow with his first wife; and Cédric and Yvan with his second wife. In 1951, von Sydow married actress Christina Olin with whom he had two sons, Claes and Henrik. His children appeared with him in the film Hawaii (1966), playing his son at different ages. He and Olin divorced on 26 February 1979 then he married French filmmaker Catherine Brelet in April 1997 in the Provence, France. He had two sons, Yvan and Cedric, with his second wife. Cédric has appeared and has worked with him since 1994. von Sydow resided in Paris, France with his second wife.

He was considered for the role of William Fawcett Robinson in Somewhere in Time (1980) before Christopher Plummer was cast.

Had appeared in two films as a leading villain, in which plots include the use of eye replacement surgery as a means of fooling security eye scanners; as Blofeld in Never Say Never Again (1983) and Lamar Burgess in Minority Report (2002).

He was co-head of the jury at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1985.

He was nominated twice: for Pelle the Conqueror (1987) in 1988 and for Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011) in 2012.

He received the Guldbagge Award for Best Director in his directing debut, the drama film Ved vejen (1988).

Peter Ingham in Awakenings (1990); Lamar Burgess in Minority Report (2002) and The Renter in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011), which earned him his second Academy Award nomination. He became one of Sweden's most admired and professional actors, and is the only male Swedish actor to receive an Oscar nomination.

In 2002, he received his French citizenship, at which time he had to renounce his Swedish citizenship.

His second Oscar nomination (Best Supporting Actor for Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011)) came at age 82, which was the same age as front-runner Christopher Plummer who was competing with him in the category (also in a second nomination). Plummer won the Oscar for Beginners (2010), in a role previously turned down by von Sydow.

As of 2015, had appeared in five films that were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar: The Emigrants (1971), The Exorcist--The Version You've Never Seen Before (1973), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Awakenings (1990) and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011).

In 2016, he joined the sixth season of the HBO series Game of Thrones (2011) as the Three-eyed Raven, which earned him his Primetime Emmy Award nomination.

Max von Sydow passed away on March 8, 2020, one month away from what would have been his 91st birthday on April 10. He never retired from acting.