ATWI... INTERVIEW SERIES
FROM BERGMAN TO BAUBY
50 YEARS AGO, A YOUNG MAX VON SYDOW STARED DOWN DEATH IN THE SEVENTH SEAL. NOW, AT 78, HE HAS COME FULL CIRCLE, AGAIN FACING HIS MORTALITY—AND HIS SON'S—IN
THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY.
The legendary actor Max von Sydow has meant different things to different sorts of people. To the art house crowd of the fifties and sixties, he was the actor used most frequently by director Ingmar Bergman in essentials like The Seventh Seal (1957), The Wild Strawberries (1957), and The Virgin Spring (1960). To lovers of the horror and action movies of the seventies, he was the go-to bad guy in later films like The Exorcist (1973) and Three Days of the Condor (1975). To moviegoers of the eighties and nineties, he popped up all over the place, from the Bond movie Never Say Never Again (1983) to Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) to Penny Marshall's Awakenings (1990), along the way garnering his only career Oscar nomination for the small Swedish film Pelle the Conqueror (1987).
Now, in a new millennium in which he has already appeared in a range of projects, from Minority Report (2002) to Rush Hour 3 (2007), Max von Sydow is back on top of his game in a small but pivotal part in one of the best films of the year, Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (12/19, Miramax, trailer). Earlier this month, I spoke extensively with von Sydow about his humble beginnings, his illustrious career, and the role for which he is now generating Best Supporting Actor Oscar-talk, Papinou, a handicapped old man whose son is suddenly afflicted with a paralyzing stroke. I had been warned that von Sydow can be a tough character, but he proved anything but—to be sure, he is an actor's actor, and thus terribly serious about his craft, but he also knows how to laugh... after all, how else could he retain a place in the top-ranks of his profession for over half a century?
I have a heavy question to begin with. I’ve read that your birth name was not Max. Where did that come from?
[laughs] Well, this is kind of a long story, but cut it out if it’s not of interest. In the days when I was born, it was in fashion in Sweden to give little boys double-names like they still do in France, like Jean Paul, Jean Pierre, etcetera. So, in Sweden, they called them Lars Erich, or Carl Anders, etcetera, etcetera. And my parents decided to baptize me Carl Adolf. Why? Because my father’s name was Carl and my maternal grandfather’s name was Adolf. So here we are—Carl Adolf. And that was okay until the war came when I was ten years old; then, suddenly, Adolf was not a very good name to listen to. And then, up in high school, when I decided to try to become an actor, and got into the Acting Academy with the National Theatre, I was accepted as a student Carl Adolf von Sydow. And when the press started getting interested in us new students, they came and made reportages there, but they always misspelled my name, or they gave me some other names—they called me Carl Anders, or Gustav Adolf, or something like that—and I got fed up with this. And if they managed to get the name right, they couldn’t spell my last name, which is not a Swedish name—it’s a German name, originally. And so I decided I had to do something about it. And then I remembered that in my days during my military service, we had at the end of the years—whatever it took—we had an evening to entertain the regiment, and I appeared in a comedy number with an imaginary flea circus. And the star of that circus was Max. And I performed this thing, and it was very popular, and after that day, the colonel of the regiment started calling me Max. And my buddies, you know, did the same. And so, in the Academy—I remember this—I thought, “Max von Sydow? That may be better.” It’s sort of not so historical as Carl Adolf, which was sort of very serious and very old-fashioned. And I tried Max von Sydow, and it’s more artistic, and it worked so that people started to remember it. [laughs] But, in fact, I am baptized after an imaginary flea. So that’s the story.
Take me back to your childhood—where you were raised, what you parents were like, what your interests were before you discovered you were an actor…
My father was a professor at a university in a small town in the south of Sweden, in Lund, and his subject was folklore—Scandinavian folklore, but he was also very interested in Ireland. And this was, you know, a long time ago—he was fifty when I was born, so he was already before 1920 on Ireland to record old folk tales, and folk traditions, etcetera, etcetera, and was a pioneer in that respect. So I grew up with lots of fairy tales and folk tales from Sweden, from Scandinavia, but also very much from Ireland. But that was my world. In the summers, we were in the country. My parents came from the country; they were both born in big farms in the country, in the forest district. So that was my world. Theater was something that did not exist in my little town, but when I was high school, a neighboring town—a larger town by the name of Malmo, in the south of Sweden—inaugurated a big, new, modern, municipal theater, and we students at my high school were sent there to, you know, see particularly the classical productions. The first one, I think, was A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by Shakespeare, and that impressed me extremely much. And my buddies and me—we decided we had to do something like this. So we created a theater society in high school and made plays, with great pleasure. And I decided I had to do this in my life. And after my exam on my military service, I applied to the Acting Academy with the National Theatre, and I was accepted, and that was the beginning. And, at that time, it was important for the young actors to get into one of those schools we had. There were several municipal theaters in the country, and several of them had their own acting academies, so you tried to be enrolled in one of these schools. And, if you did, you were immediately exposed to the interest of directors, etcetera. I’ve never really auditioned for anything except getting into that academy—I’ve been very fortunate. Every year, the students had a show and showed what they had been working on during the year, and all the directors, and other theater directors and film directors came to watch you. And, on my second year there, I was already offered a part in a film.
You’ve mentioned how you discovered theater, but I wonder how you first discovered movies. Did you go to see movies growing up? And did you have any favorite films or actors who impressed you or influenced you as a young man?
Yes, I did. Of course I went to the movies. But my parents were both brought up in very strict, religious homes where, you know, movies and theater was not really accepted, so I had a tough time, in the beginning, to convince them that theater or acting might be something good. But this meant also that they did not take me to the movies very much. It took me a few years, really, before I discovered the wonder of movies. When I was a young boy, in those days, it was Errol Flynn, you know, James Cagney, etcetera, and the British ones—Leslie Howard and, later on, of course, Michael Redgrave, and all these wonderful classic actors. I think Trevor Howard made a particularly strong impression on me—
Oh, I love Brief Encounter, sure…
Yes. Oh, did I say Trevor Howard? I mean Leslie Howard, sorry—Leslie Howard, who became the hero during the war in Scarlet Pimpernel, and Pimpernel Smith, etcetera.
In preparing for this interview, I was somewhat surprised to read that one American actor you were particularly fond of was Gary Cooper…
Yes, yes, very much.
Who was not a particularly trained actor…
No, no, but he impressed—he impressed by his strong personality. And somebody who really impressed me very much was Spencer Tracy. Spencer Tracy was the hero after—what’s it called? The Kipling film?
Oh, Captains Courageous?
Yes! Yes, Captains Courageous. Yes, yes, yes.
It’s interesting to me that the actors you have mentioned were at their height right before a turning point for acting. They were largely untrained, unlike the generation that followed them—Brando, Clift, and all of them—who introduced us to the idea of the Method and other formal techniques of acting. You came into the industry around this turning point, having been to school for acting, which leads me to wonder how you approach a part—what technique do you employ to get into a role?
I can’t say that I have a technique. I think the basis was what I learned at the Academy, and that was just doing it, doing it, doing it—doing scenes from the great classics, and watching the great actors who at that time were working at the National Theatre in Stockholm. There was particularly one wonderful actor whose name was Lars Hanson—he was here during the early days, the silent days, with Victor Sjostrom and Mauritz Stiller. When I came to the Academy, he was a man of—well, he was in his early sixties, I believe. But he was one of those who had such a strong personality on stage he didn’t have to do anything. You just couldn’t help looking; you had to follow whatever he did. He had such a strong presence. And I admired him enormously, and probably imitated him very much in the beginning. [laughs] But I don’t have a technique, really; it is just a matter of finding out what is behind what you are reading in the play or in the screenplay you have—what has happened to this man before, and why is he the way he is? And you have to understand him; you don’t have to love him. You can’t love all the crooks you have to do, but you have to understand why they are crooks, and why they are behaving in the way they are behaving. Then, it’s a matter of trying to translate your vision into something that the audience will understand. I think, also, for every new scene, you have to know exactly what your character wants to do in that moment. It’s not about what he feels; it’s about what he wants to do. And then all the rest will come. And characterization will also come—or at least it should. [laughs]
I’m interested to know from you, since you are someone who has achieved great success on both the stage and the screen, what you consider to be the main differences between theater and film, what the positives and negatives of each are, and if you ultimately prefer one over the other?
If I had to—if I had to choose one of the two, I would choose the theater, because you have the continuity, and you have the direct contact with the audience. Films give you a wonderful opportunity—you get very close to your audience in close-ups, and whatever you do, most of the time, is closer than you ever will get in a theater. But, then, you have all the machinery around you; you have to respect the technique all the time; and you don’t what is going to happen to the material when the editor is working—they might change all of what you have done, and they might cut you out. On the stage, you are there, and you give directly to your audience what you want to. For me, the immediate contact with the audience is very exciting. But it’s tough—it is a tougher discipline, I would say, than the film acting is, because you have to be there every evening, and you have to be just as good every evening—there’s never a take two. You have to be good on take one, and that’s it; that’s your only chance. You have to force the audience to come back the following evening if you want to give another version! [laughs]
It has now been fifty years since the release of the first two films that you made under the direction of Ingmar Bergman, The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries. When you look back on the fifteen films on which the two of you collaborated—
Eleven.
Was it only eleven?
[chuckles] Only eleven, yes.
[laughs] When you look back on them now, especially after his passing, what goes through your mind?
Well, I cannot choose one film being more important than the other. To me, it’s one piece of work, so to speak. And, of course, it has been extraordinarily important for me. And I was very privileged that I got a chance to work with Mr. Bergman when I was very young—he was still young, also. And we had a few years together, in the beginning, where we worked almost all the time; in the theater, during the theater season, he produced or directed maybe two or three productions every years; then, in the summer, he shot a film, maybe two. And you can find the continuity, somehow, that some of the plays he directed inspired him to choose subjects for his films that he made at the time. And it was a very positive, very fruitful, and inspiring time. I was very, very privileged. And, you know, if you are at the right spot and meet the right people at the right moment, that’s very important. And I was very privileged to do that. I’m thinking of all the people who didn’t but might be just as talented, and they just haven’t got the chance. I got wonderful chances, and opportunities, and I’m very grateful for that. And many, many, many of them I got from Mr. Bergman. And I owe him so much I cannot tell you.
People who look back at those films today and really study them—and study both of your careers—feel that, in a way, you brought out the best in each other. That is not to say that your work apart from each other wasn’t also excellent, but rather that something magical happened when the two of you collaborated. Do you believe he or you did anything different than normal when working together?
I don’t know. I cannot tell. He was just very inspiring—and very demanding, of course. And he had a very, very strict working discipline, which I think I have learned, and which I’ve tried to maintain through my career. But there was a great joy in the work. People who didn’t know him, they might think that he was a very, very serious, very—how should I say?—very old-fashioned, serious, and maybe even boring person. No, he wasn’t. He was a funny man to work with, with lots of jokes around the sometimes very intense and very tough takes and the theater productions that he directed. But there was a lot of joy and a lot of laughs, also.
Eventually, people in Hollywood couldn’t help but notice the great work that you were doing, and they wanted you to come, but you resisted for a while. Eventually, though, you made some Hollywood films while still keeping one foot in Europe. What were the main differences between working in European cinema and American cinema?
Well, in a way, for me, as an actor, there was no difference, really, between the work, the conditions, etcetera. It has to do with the size of the production, it has to do with the size of the budget, it has to do with the number of machines being available, etcetera. The productions in Sweden, at the time, were small—small groups working together, everybody knew each other. Most of the American productions I was in—in the beginning, particularly—were big productions with hundreds of people, and lots of technique that we did not have, at the time, in Sweden at all. But, for me, as an actor, I was doing the same thing. I learned a lot. I think I learned a lot from George Stevens, for example, who was a very tough director, in his way—he shot so many takes, and he shot so many angles on every scene, and he forced his actors to match their action from one take to another. He could spend days and days with the same sequence, but shot from every, every imaginable angle, and from every imaginable distance between the camera and the actor or the actors. And you were forced, consequently, to really do the same every time, which may be difficult. But it’s difficult, also, to give the same intensity, or whatever it is that’s demanded from that particular scene every time when you go on, and on, and on, and on forever. But it was a great school—tough school, but interesting.
The American film with which you’re probably most closely associated is The Exorcist. I want to ask you about the experience of making that movie, and also the trend to offer you very similar parts for years afterwards, which I gather caused you great frustration…
Well, I think The Exorcist is a very good film. I think it’s a very well done film of its genre. And it was a challenge for me because Father Merrin was so much older than I was at the time—it took four-and-a-half hours every morning to put on the makeup, but thank God Dick Smith was behind it, the master makeup artist of the day, which he I’m sure still is, even if he doesn’t work. But it was interesting to try to play, in close-up, a so much older man. I have done that after that many times—I played older than my own age—which is fascinating. [laughs] I find it interesting. But it was a clergyman, and producers, of course, they are interested in their money, and they don’t want to take risks, so if they need a clergyman in a film, they look for actors who have done clergymen before, and done it well—who have had certain success with that. So they look for somebody—“Ah! Max von Sydow has played Father Merrin. He has played even Jesus, etcetera. We take him!” So I have I don’t know how many religious characters of this kind I have done—but many—and how many I’ve been offered and turned down. I try to avoid them now [laughs], unless they are particularly interesting. But I enjoyed Father Merrin, at the time.
You found a different sort of role—and I assume that is why you took it—in the film we’re all talking about now, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, as Papinou, the father of Jean-Dominique Bauby. How did this role come to you, and what you decide to do it?
Well, it came to me in form of a wonderful, wonderful screenplay. And this little gem of Papinou—I read many screenplays, and most of them—most unfortunately—are very bad, are very boring. But this was an extraordinary, wonderful screenplay, and after just a few pages of reading I knew I wanted to do this, and I’m very happy that I did, because I enjoyed it very much, and I think that it has come out as a wonderful film. I hope it will have a large audience.
One thing that is very touching about it is the relationship between Jean-Dominique and his father—
It is.
I hope you can talk about working with Mathieu Amalric, the actor who plays Jean-Dominique. First of all, I don’t know if it’s just me, but I thought I saw even a physical resemblance between the two of you, like you could have been a father and son. But, beyond that, the characters have a very emotionally close relationship. How did you two get on together?
Well, we had never met until that day, and we just found immediately a sympathy. Mathieu improvised a little bit, which I had difficulty to follow, because I’m not that secure in French. But then we found a path which we enjoyed together, and I’m very pleased that it happened. He gave me a lot of inspiration during that day—we shot it in one day.
Just the shaving scene or all of them?
No, no. My two scenes were shot in one day.
The shaving scene is especially touching because we have an idea of what’s to come—
Yes, yes.
Can you talk about that scene?
It’s a great scene because it’s moving but it’s also funny, in a way. Papinou is very honest [laughs] with his opinions about what he thinks about his son, and the advice he gives to his son, and the little things he tells him about his own life, and about his own relationship to women. And I think it’s very moving that he does, this old gentleman who is stuck in his chair, and is happy to be visited by his son. It’s a wonderful scene. I was very pleased. After having read the script, I sent a fan letter, actually, to Ron Harwood, telling him how much I enjoyed the script—I had never done that before.
I think the script provides an observation for your character that is very true—when Papinou speaks with Jean-Dominique on the telephone for the first time after the stroke, he mentions that their situations are perhaps not all that different, that they’re both sort of trapped…
Yes, yes. Well, this is also moving because, I mean, in a way it’s a very naïve observation by the father. He tries to say something to encourage his son, and whatever he says it’s sort of wrong. [laughs] He asks, “How are you?” [laughs] And he says, “No, no, that’s a silly question.” And the son says, “Yes, it was a silly question.” [laughs] And then he comes with this comparison, and it’s no comfort, but he tries to comfort his son. [laughs] And it is this comical quality which makes it more moving.
One thing I have to ask you about—and I don’t know that it’s always the most comfortable thing for actors to discuss—but we are now approaching the awards season, and with that comes a lot of talk from people who stand on the sidelines, and observe, and pick out who they think may or may not be a contender down the road. Your name has come up a lot as a potential Supporting Actor nominee—it’s not a large performance, but it’s a very powerful one. It seems remarkable that you’ve only been nominated once in the past. Would another nomination have any meaning to you?
Well, yes, of course it would. Of course it would. It’s wonderful to get recognition. But, I mean, that’s not why you work as an actor—at least, I don’t. I work because I love working. I choose a part and I do it because I think, “There’s something I can do to this particular part.” But I don’t aim at any awards. If they show up, it’s wonderful. Of course, it’s wonderful.
You are clearly as sharp at acting as you’ve ever been, and people still connect with you, and they enjoy what you’re doing. What is your outlook for the future? Do you have any specific role you would particularly like to bring to the screen or anyone who you would particularly like to work with?
Well, well, no. Just good parts. Good parts, good directors. We’re talking a little about a few things, but whether it will happen or not I don’t know yet. But there is something I would very much like to do—but I’m not going to tell you because I’m very superstitious.
