“When I was brought up in Sweden, there was a great opportunity for young people to learn how to act in our municipal theaters with their small companies. You would be under contract for eight months and have the summer free to take other opportunities.”

Swedish and French actor

Max von Sydow was a Swedish and French actor whose career stretched across seven decades in European and American cinema, television, and theatre. He was born in 1929 and died in 2020. He is known for a wide-ranging body of work that made him a familiar presence on screen and stage. He appeared in more than 150 films and several television series in multiple languages, moving easily between thoughtful leads, sardonic figures, and threatening villains. His work brought him honors from the Cannes Film Festival and the Venice Film Festival, and he was nominated for Academy Awards for Pelle the Conqueror and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.