Biography

Father of eight children with five different women.

Member of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 2002.

George Lucas persuaded him to direct two episodes of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1992) even though he had first declined. The two have been good friends ever since.

Walked out on a live interview on Danish television on 22 July 2003. He later said he was unable to concentrate because of a preceding program segment about the war in Iraq.

Directed one Oscar nominated performance: Max von Sydow in Pelle the Conqueror (1987).

We talked a lot about The Best Intentions and how we could shoot certain scenes in different ways with slightly different bits of dialogue and information, so that later on, we could cut the piece more easily and it would still feel complete, even though it was shorter.

It was a major dream come true at last. In many respects, Jerusalem is a very modern and important story about people in a period of transition, with all the unrest that permeates society on the eve of a new century. The big life issues are at stake.

She is also brought to a point of zero in the beginning of the story, and I think you can say that about a lot of my films in that they are often about people who are brought to the point of zero in the beginning of the film.

I wanted to make Jerusalem as feature film. But we couldn't finance it only through theatrical release, we couldn't get all the money we needed. We had to get some money from television. So we said, ok, let's do it both ways. So we did it in four parts.

I spent almost 3 months with Bergman, four hours every afternoon. We sat and went through the whole script. To be honest, most of the time we talked about life and other different things. It was really a wonderful time.