Mai Zetterling

Mai Elisabeth Zetterling (; 24 May 1925 – 17 March 1994) was a Swedish film director, novelist and actress.

Early life Zetterling was born in Västerås, Sweden to a working class family. She started her career as an actor at the age of 17 at the Royal Dramatic Theatre, the Swedish national theatre, appearing in war-era films.

Career Zetterling appeared in film and television productions spanning six decades from the 1940s to the 1990s. Her breakthrough as an actress came in the 1944 film Torment written for her by Ingmar Bergman, in which she played a controversial role as a tormented shopgirl. Shortly afterwards, she moved to England and gained instant success there with her title role in Basil Dearden's Frieda (1947), playing opposite David Farrar.

In 1960, she appeared in Danger Man as Nadia in the episode "The Sisters".

She began directing and publishing novels and non-fiction in the early 1960s, her films starting with political documentaries and a short film titled The War Game (1963), which was nominated for a BAFTA award, and won a Silver Lion at Venice, both for the Best Short Film. Her directorial feature film debut Älskande par (1964, "Loving Couples"), based on the novels of Agnes von Krusenstjerna, caused a scandal at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival for its sexual explicitness and nudity. Kenneth Tynan of The Observer later called it "one of the most ambitious debuts since Citizen Kane". It was not the only film she made that caused controversy for its frank sexuality.

When critics reviewing her debut feature stated that "Mai Zetterling directs like a man", she began to explore feminist themes more explicitly in her work. The Girls, which had an all-star Swedish cast that included Bibi Andersson and Harriet Andersson, discussed women's liberation (or lack thereof) in a society controlled by men, as the protagonists compare their lives to characters in the play Lysistrata, and find that things have not progressed very much for women since ancient times. In 1966, she appeared as a storyteller on the BBC children's programme Jackanory, and in five episodes narrated Tove Jansson's Finn Family Moomintroll.

She is perhaps most famously known as Luke's Grandmother in the 1990 film 'The Witches' which was one of her final lead roles before her death in 1994.

Personal life

Zetterling was married to Norwegian actor Tutte Lemkow from 1944 to 1953. They had a daughter, Etienne and a son, Louis, who is professor of environmental sociology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She published an autobiography, All Those Tomorrows. From 1958 to 1979, she was married to British author David Hughes, who collaborated with her on her first films as director.

Documents at the National Archives in London show that, as she lived in a communal house, she was watched by MI5 as a suspected Communist. This coincided with the McCarthyite purges in Hollywood. However, it did not hamper her career, however.

Death On 17 March 1994, a year after her final role on television, Zetterling died of cancer at her home in London. She was 68 years old.

Filmography As Director

As Actor (Alternate Tiles Abandon Ship!

Works