Biography

Liv Ullmann

Jump to

Liv Ullmann's father was a Norwegian engineer who used to work abroad, so as a child she lived in Tokyo, Canada, New York and Oslo. In the mid-1950s she made her stage debut and in 1957 made her film debut. She really became successful, however, when she began to work for Swedish director Ingmar Bergman in such films as Persona (1966), The Passion of Anna (1969) and Face to Face (1976). She also had a successful film career away from Bergman (The Abdication (1974), Dangerous Moves (1984).
- IMDb mini biography by: Volker Boehm

Has a cottage on a cliff overlooking a fjord in Norway.
Outside Scandinavia she has constantly been mistaken for a Swede despite being 100% Norwegian. The reason for this is probably because non-Scandinavians don't realize how ordinary it is for Swedes and Norwegians to work across the borders in the film industry, and mainly because of her frequent collaboration with Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. One example of this mistake is even evident here on the Internet Movie Database, where her nationality on the award page for the 2001 Cannes Film Festival (jury president) is listed as "Sweden.".
2006: Her performance as Elisabet Vogler in Persona (1966) is ranked #49 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time.
She and Ingmar Bergman made 10 movies together: Face to Face (1976), Autumn Sonata (1978), The Passion of Anna (1969), Persona (1966), Saraband (2003), Scenes from a Marriage (1973), The Serpent's Egg (1977), Shame (1968), Hour of the Wolf (1968) and Cries & Whispers (1972).
Was offered guest-starring role in the last episodes of the TV series Sex and the City (1998) that took place in Paris, France. At first she was delighted at the idea since she and her husband were both fans of the show, but when she received the script for the episodes she felt she wasn't right for the part, and backed out.

[on working as a director] I've worked with more bad directors than good directors, and you learn by the bad ones because you find out how they destroy other peoples' fantasy life.
[on her frequent co-star, Max von Sydow] He is a friend I love dearly as perhaps you can only love someone you have worked with and known personally. It is a double relationship mixed into one. We haven't worked together for several years and I miss that very much.
Quick cuts and camera angles - they think that's film. That is not film. Film is to show people and life, and to make you know more about life than when you went in. It's not this cut, cut, cut, kill, kill, kill, sex, sex, sex...
The older one gets in this profession, the more people there are with whom one would never work again.
[on Ingrid Bergman] If possible, I admired the woman more than the actress.

Suggest an edit or add missing content