Max von Sydow

Max von Sydow (; born Carl Adolf von Sydow; 10 April 1929 – 8 March 2020) was a Swedish and French actor. He had a 70-year career in European and American cinema, television, and theatre, appearing in more than 150 films and several television series in multiple languages. Capable in roles ranging from stolid, contemplative protagonists to sardonic artists and menacing, often gleeful villains, von Sydow received numerous accolades including honors from the Cannes Film Festival and the Venice Film Festival. He was nominated for two Academy Awards: for Best Actor for Pelle the Conqueror and for Best Supporting Actor for Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011).

Von Sydow was first noticed internationally for playing the 14th-century knight Antonius Block in Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957), which features iconic scenes of his character challenging Death to a game of chess. He appeared in eleven films directed by Bergman, including Wild Strawberries (1957), The Virgin Spring (1960), Through a Glass Darkly (1961), Winter Light (1963), Shame (1968), and The Touch (1971).

Von Sydow made his American film debut as Jesus Christ in the Biblical epic film The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) and went on to star in films such as Hawaii (1966), The Exorcist (1973), Three Days of the Condor (1975), Flash Gordon (1980), Conan the Barbarian (1982) and the James Bond adaptation Never Say Never Again (1983). He also appeared in supporting roles in Dune (1984), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Awakenings (1990), Minority Report (2002), The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007), Shutter Island (2010), Robin Hood (2010), and Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015). He portrayed the main antagonist Leland Gaunt (The Devil) in Needful Things (1993). In 2016, he portrayed Bloodraven in the HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones, for which he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series.

Von Sydow received the Royal Foundation of Sweden's Cultural Award in 1954, was made a Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres in 2005, and was named a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur on 17 October 2012.

Early life Carl Adolf von Sydow was born on 10 April 1929 in Lund, Sweden. His father, Carl Wilhelm von Sydow, was an ethnologist and professor of folkloristics at Lund University. His mother, Baroness Maria Margareta Rappe, was a schoolteacher. Sydow was of part-German ancestry. A paternal ancestor, David Sydow ("von" or "Von" was added later to the family name), emigrated from Pomerania to the Kalmar region in 1724. His mother was also of part-Pomeranian descent. Sydow was raised as a Lutheran, but became an agnostic in the 1970s.

Sydow attended Lund Cathedral School, where he learned English at an early age. which prompted him to establish an amateur theatrical group along with his friends back at school. After completing his service, Sydow studied at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm where he trained between 1948 and 1951. Sydow's theatrical work won him critical recognition, and in 1954 he received the Royal Foundation of Sweden's Cultural Award, a grant to young, promising actors. Bergman and Sydow's first film was The Seventh Seal (, 1957), in which Sydow portrayed Antonius Block, a disillusioned 14th-century knight returning from the Crusades to a plague-stricken Sweden. The scene of his character playing a game of chess with Death has come to be regarded as an iconic moment in cinema. In The Magician (, 1958), Sydow starred as Vogler, a 19th-century traveling illusionist who remains silent for most of the film. He also refused the opportunity to play the title role for Dr. No (1962) and Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music (1965).

In 1965, Sydow accepted George Stevens's offer and made his international debut, playing Christ in the epic The Greatest Story Ever Told. In the same year, the two appeared in the drama Shame , about a couple, both former musicians, living on a farm on an island during a war.

In the 1980s, he portrayed two supervillains: Ming the Merciless in 1980's Flash Gordon and Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the 1983 James Bond film Never Say Never Again. Sydow also appeared in John Milius' Conan the Barbarian (1982), Jan Troell's Flight of the Eagle (1982), Rick Moranis' and Dave Thomas' Strange Brew (1983), David Lynch's Dune (1984) and Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986).

In the 1987 Bille August film Pelle the Conqueror, Sydow portrayed an impoverished Swedish labourer who brings his son to Denmark to try to build a better life for themselves. In 1989, Sydow appeared in the television film Red King, White Knight, for which he received his first Primetime Emmy Award nomination. He also supplied the voice for Vigo the Carpathian in the 1989 film, Ghostbusters II.

In 1997, Sydow played Nobel Prize-winning Norwegian novelist and Nazi sympathizer Knut Hamsun in the biopic Hamsun.

In 2002, Sydow acted in one of his biggest commercial successes, playing the PreCrime director opposite Tom Cruise in Steven Spielberg's science fiction thriller Minority Report.

In April 2013, Sydow was honored at the Turner Classic Movie (TCM) Festival in Hollywood, with screenings of two of his best-known films, Three Days of the Condor and The Seventh Seal.

In March 2014, Sydow provided the voice of an art forger in "The War of Art", an episode of The Simpsons.

In 2015, he played the explorer Lor San Tekka in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. He lent his voice to the 2009 game Ghostbusters: The Video Game and reprised his role as Lor San Tekka in Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2016).

In 2018, Sydow appeared in Thomas Vinterberg's film Kursk, also known as The Command, based on the true story of the Kursk submarine disaster.

His final role was in Nicholas Dimitropoulos's war drama Echoes of the Past (2021). He portrayed Nicolas Andreou, one of the last living survivors of the Kalavryta massacre of 1943 committed by Nazi troops during the Axis occupation of Greece. Sydow was reported to be either an agnostic or an atheist. In 2012, he told Charlie Rose in an interview that Ingmar Bergman had told him he would contact him after death to show him that there was a life after death. When Rose asked Sydow if he had heard from Bergman, he replied that he had but chose not to elaborate further on the meaning of this statement. In the same interview, he described himself as a doubter in his youth but stated this doubt was gone and indicated he came to agree with Bergman's belief in the afterlife.

Max von Sydow died on 8 March 2020 at his home in Provence, France, at age 90, just one month before his 91st birthday.

Filmography

Awards and nominations

He was nominated for two Academy Awards, for his performances in Bille August's Pelle the Conqueror (1987) and Stephen Daldry's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011). At the age of 82, von Sydow was one of the oldest Oscar acting nominees. He received two Golden Globe Awards nominations and two Primetime Emmy Awards nominations.

In 1982, he received the Best Actor prize at the Venice International Film Festival for his performance in Flight of the Eagle. He was the winner of 3 Guldbagge Awards and received a festival trophy from the Cannes Film Festival in 2004.