Max von Sydow was born Carl Adolf von Sydow on April 10 1929 in Lund, Scania, Sweden. He attended Lund Cathedral School where he learned English while very young. He became interested in the theatre after seeing a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream in Malmö during a class trip. He served in the Swedish Army Quartermaster Corps, where he changed his name to "Max" as people were constantly misspelling his name. The name "Max" came from a flea he had played in a sketch. Following his service he studied acting at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm. He joined the Norrköping-Linköping Municipal Theatre in 1951 and in 1953 he joined the City Theatre in Hälsingborg. Mr. Von Sydow made his film debut in 1949 in Only a Mother. Over the next few years he appeared in such films as Miss Julie (1951), Ingen mans kvinna (1953), and Rätten att älska (1956).
It was in 1955 that he joined the Malmö City Theatre, whose head director at the time was Ingmar Bergman. Mr. Bergman cast Max Von Sydow in the lead role of Antonius Block in The Seventh Seal (1957). The film, in which a knight plays a chess game against death as the plague overtakes Sweden, established Messrs. Bergman and Von Sydow on the international stage. It has since become one of the most iconic films of all time. The director and actor would ultimately make 13 films together. In the late Fifties Max von Sydow appeared in the Bergman films Wild Strawberries (1957), So Close to Life (1958), The Magician (1958), and The Virgin Spring (1960). He also appeared in the movies The Minister of Uddarbo (1957), Spion 508 (1958), and The Wedding Day (1960).
In the Sixties Max von Sydow continued to appear in Ingmar Bergman's movies, including Through a Glass Darkly (1961), Winter Light (1963), The Silence (1963), Hour of the Wolf (1968), Shame (1968), and The Passion of Anna (1969). He also appeared in such films as The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), The Reward (1965), Hawaii (1966), The Quiller Memorandum (1966), Made in Sweden (1969), and The Kremlin Letter (1970).
In 1971 Max von Sydow appeared in Ingmar Bergman's film The Touch. In the Seventies he also appeared in such films as Embassy (1972), The Exorcist (1973), Steppenwolf (1974), Three Days of the Condor (1975), The Ultimate Warrior (1975), Cuore di cane (1976), Foxtrot (1976), Voyage of the Damned (1976), Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), March or Die (1977), Brass Target (1980), and Flash Gordon (1980). On television he appeared in the mini-series Kvartetten som sprängdes. He appeared on Broadway in The Night of the Tribades
In the Eighties Mr. von Sydow appeared in such movies as Victory (1981), Conan the Barbarian (1982), The Adventures of Bob & Doug McKenzie: Strange Brew (1983), The Soldier's Tale (1984), Dreamscape (1984), Dune (1984), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Duet for One (1986), The Second Victory (1987), Father (1990), and Awakenings (1990). On television he appeared in the mini-series Quo Vadis?, Christopher Columbus, The Last Place on Earth, and Gösta Berlings saga. He appeared in such TV movies as Samson and Delilah, Kojak: The Belarus File, and Red King, White Knight. He appeared on Broadway in Duet for One.
In the Nineties Max von Sydow appeared in such films as A Kiss Before Dying (1991), Oxen (1991), Needful Things (1993), Time is Money (1994), Judge Dredd (1995), Jerusalem (1996), What Dreams May Come (1998), and Snow Falling on Cedars (1999). He appeared on television in the mini-series Den goda viljan and Radetzkymarsch. He guest starred on the TV shows The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and Screen One. He was a regular on the show Professione fantasma.
In the Naughts Max von Sydow appeared in such movies as Vercingétorix (2001), Intacto (2001), Minority Report (2002), Heidi (2005), Rush Hour 3 (2007), Emotional Athematic (2007), Solomon Kane (2009), Shutter Island (2010), and Robin Hood (2010). In the Teens he appeared on the TV shows The Tudors and Game of Thrones. He guest starred on The Simpsons. He appeared in the mini-series Nuremberg and the TV movie Ring of the Nibelungs. He appeared in the movies Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011), Branded (2012), The Letters (2014), Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015), Les premiers les derniers (2106), and Kursk (2018).
There is a good reason that Max von Sydow was an acting legend. Quite simply, he appeared in a wide array of movies in a wide array of roles. The first film he ever made with Ingmar Bergman, The Seventh Seal, is considered one of the greatest films ever made. In it he played Antonius Block, a knight who returns to Sweden from the Crusades to find the country overtaken by the plague. He would play an entirely different sort of role in another Ingmar Bergman film, Through a Glass Darkly. In the film he played a doctor whose wife suffers from schizophrenia.
While Max von Sydow may be best known for appearing in the cerebral films of Ingmar Bergman, he appeared in many other sorts of films as well. Indeed, aside from Ingmar Bergman's movies, Mr. von Sydow may be best known for playing Father Lankester Merrin, the title exorcist in the classic horror movie The Exorcist. He may be equally well known for playing Flash's archenemy Ming the Merciless in Flash Gordon. Over the years Mr. von Sydow played several historical figures, including Jesus in The Greatest Story Ever Told, Otto Frank in a 1967 television adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank, Gustav Schröder in Voyage of the Damned, the apostle Peter in the mini-series Quo Vadis?, and Sigmund Freud in the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles episode "Vienna, November 1908." In many respects Max von Sydow's career spanned the whole of cinema, from time honoured classics to big budget blockbusters to low budget genre films. And in all of them Max von Sydow gave great performances. Every film in which Max von Sydow ever appeared was better because he was in it.
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