Max von Sydow

Max von Sydow, born Carl Adolf von Sydow on April 10, 1929, in Lund, Sweden.
As the son of an ethnology professor and a baroness, von Sydow grew up in a wealthy and intellectual family, developing an interest in theatre during his high school years.
He studied at the Royal Dramatic Theatre (Dramaten) in Stockholm, where he learned the foundations of stage arts while also taking his first steps into cinema.
The event that altered the course of his career and transformed him into a global cinema icon was his meeting with legendary director Ingmar Bergman.
Together, they forged one of the most fruitful director-actor partnerships in film history.
Von Sydow gained international recognition for his role as Antonius Block, a knight playing chess with Death, in Bergman's masterpiece *The Seventh Seal* (1957).
He brought depth to existential characters in classic films such as *Wild Strawberries* (1957), *The Virgin Spring* (1960), and *Through a Glass Darkly* (1961), all directed by Bergman.
His success in Bergman's films opened the doors of Hollywood to him.

He made a grand entrance into American cinema by portraying the Prophet Jesus in the 1965 film "The Greatest Story Ever Told." However, one of his most iconic roles etched into the collective memory of wide audiences was that of Father Merrin in William Friedkin's horror classic "The Exorcist" (1973). In this film, the elderly priest was shown to be much older than he actually was through makeup, and the film achieved cult status. His role as a cool-headed hired killer in Sydney Pollack's "Three Days of the Condor" (1975) and his portrayal of Emperor Ming in "Flash Gordon" (1980) demonstrated the breadth of his acting range with such fantastical characters. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Lassefar in Bille August's 1987 film "Pelle the Conqueror." In the later years of his career, the master actor continued to work tirelessly, appearing in modern classics such as Steven Spielberg's "Minority Report" (2002) and Martin Scorsese's "Shutter Island" (2010). He was nominated for an Academy Award a second time for his role without dialogue in the 2011 film "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close."

In the later stages of his career, he met a new generation of audiences with "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" (2015) and as the Three-Eyed Raven in the series "Game of Thrones". Max von Sydow passed away on March 8, 2020, at the age of 90 from natural causes at his home in France.