THE CRAFTSMAN (REMEMBERING MAX VON SYDOW)

When you mention Max Von Sydow, you often think of his work with Ingmar Bergman.

You may think of his Knight in 'The Seventh Seal'bor his many movies opposite Liv Ullmann.

You may even think of his performances in 'The Greatest Story Ever Told', 'The Exorcist', 'Hannah and Her Sisters'', 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly', 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' and 'Game of Thrones'.

Always compelling even in the weakest films of his career, Von Sydow worked with great directors like John Huston, William Friedkin, John Boorman, David Lynch, Wim Wenders, Billie August, Woody Allen, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and Ridley Scott.

He rubbed shoulders on set with actors like Michael Caine, Telly Savalas, Donald Sutherland, Leonardo DiCaprio, Robin Williams and Robert Redford.

But despite working with some of the most respected names in cinema, he remained a humble man - so humble he even revealed that he chose his stage name after a character he played during military service who was a flea.

"During my military service, I performed a sketch in which I played a flea called Max," he recalled.

"So when critics kept misspelling my name, I decided to change it and thought: 'Ah, Max!'"

Born Carl Adolf Von Sydow in Lund across a strait from Copenhagen, the Swedish actor's father was a professor and his mother was a schoolteacher.

Raised a Lutheran but eventually becoming an agnostic, he had German blood on his mother's side of the family.

At the Lund Cathedral School, he learned English and German from an early age - skills that would prove useful in his later career.

However his love of acting was triggered by attending a performance of Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' while at school.

It inspired him so much he decided to form his own amateur theatre troupe with friends.

After spending two years in the Swedish Army's Quartermaster Corps,  Von Sydow decided to forge a career as an actor and managed to secure training in Stockholm's Royal Dramatic Theatre.

After a debut stage appearance in Goethe's 'Egmont', he started to appear in films as well.

Von Sydow landed his first screen role in Alf Sjoberg's 1949 drama 'Only A Mother' and two years later in the same director's adaptation of August Strindberg's 'Miss Julie'.

He continued to cut his theatrical teeth in the Norkoping-Linkoping Municipal Theatre, appearing in nine plays including Henrik Ibsen's 'Peer Gynt'.

In 1951, he married the actress Christina Olin and they would have two sons, Clas and Henri.

In 1953, Von Sydow joined Halsingborg's Municipal Theatre, appearing in 11 productions including as Prospero in William Shakespeare's 'The Tempest'.

Acquiring a reputation as one of his homeland's best young stage actors, he was awarded in 1954 the Royal Foundation of Sweden's Cultural Award.

It was his decision to join the Malmö City Theatre that was to prove significant, bringing him into contact for the first time with the great stage and screen director Ingmar Bergman who he would collaborate with on 11 movies. 

Having had two other film roles under his belt in Lars Erik Khellgren's 1953 film.'Ingen mans Kvina'( 'No Man's Woman') and Mimi Pollak's 'Ratten att Alska' ('The Wheel to Love') three years later, he landed one of his most celebrated Bergman movie parts as a Knight playing chess with the Grim Reaper in 'The Seventh Seal'.

With its striking black and white cinematography and its Book of Revelation inspiration, the film was not an instant hit with Swedish critics.

However it made the rest of the world sit up and take notice of Bergman and Von Sydow, as it  captured the Special Jury Prize at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival and grewin reputation, becoming one of the most respected and influential movies of all time. 

They followed it up with another highly respected drama 'Wild Strawberries' in 1957, which starred Victor Sjostrom and Bibi Andersson and which featured Von Sydow as an attendant in a petrol station. 

Bergman's film would capture the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Feature and earn an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

In 1957 Bergman cast him as a hunter in an acclaimed Swedish TV film of the writer Hjalmar Bergman's 40 minute play 'Mr Sleeman is Coming' with Bibi Andersson.

A year later he joined Andersson in another acclaimed Bergman movie 'So Close to Life' which picked up awards at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival, in which he played the husband of Eva Dahlbeck's pregnant woman who is going through a difficult labour.

In one of Bergman's most admired and sinister films 'The Magician', Von Sydow played in 1958 a magician in a travelling performance troupe  who claims to have supernatural powers - Woody Allen would later cite it as one of his favourite works.

There was a mixed reception, however, for Bergman's 1960 Medieval drama 'The Virgin Spring' in which Von Sydow played a knight avenging the rape and murder of his daughter, played by Birgitta Petersen, by herdsmen. 

Their 1961 follow-up 'Through A Glass Darkly', a family drama with Harriet Andersson and Gunnar Bjornstrand, earned rave reviews and an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Feature.

Two years later, he played a fisherman in Bergman's 'Winter Light' which featured Bjornstrand as a minister plunged into a crisis of faith and while the film initially met mixed reviews, it has grown in critical stature over the years.

Now a Bergman regular alongside Bibi Andersson, Bjornstrand and Ingrid Thilin, their collaboration spilled over into the Swedish theatre with Von Sydow taking on the role of Peer Gynt for his mentor, playing Brick in Tennessee Williams' 'Cat On A Hot Tin Roof' and Alceste in Moliere's 'The Misanthrope'.

His growing profile through Bergman internationally caught the eye of Hollywood producers and he was approached at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival to see if he would make films in the US.

Von Sydow, however, did not initially bite and he spurned the chance to appear in the titular role in the James Bond movie 'Dr No' and as Captain Von Trapp in the classic musical 'The Sound of Music'.

However he succumbed when he was offered the chance to play Jesus in George Stevens' star studded 1965 Biblical epic 'The Greatest Story Ever Told' with Dorothy McGuire, Charlton Heston, Telly Savalas, Jose Ferrer, Claude Rains, Martin Landau, Shelley Winters, Sidney Poitier and John Wayne.

Von Sydow found the whole experience of playing Jesus quite stressful, later admitting: "The more I had to act like a saint, the more I felt like being a sinner...

"The most difficult part of playing Christ was that I had to keep up the image around the clock.

"As soon as the picture finished, I returned home to Arden and tried to find my old self. It took six months to get back to normal."

His next Hollywood role was as an El Paso crop duster in Serge Bourguignon's Western, 'The Reward' but it failed to ignite the box office. 

Von Sydow was cast in Sweden as Otto Frank in a 1967 TV movie of 'The Diary of Ann Frank' with Lilli Palmer and Theodore Bikel.

Back in Hollywood he earned his first Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor as a newly ordained minister sent to Hawaii to bring Christianity to the islands in George Roy Hill's 'Hawaii' which also starred Julie Andrews, Richard Harris, Carroll O'Connor and  Gene Hackman. The film also featured appearances by Von Susie's sons, Clas and Henrik. 

Michael Anderson cast him as Oktober in the well received Harold Pinter scripted Euro spy thriller 'The Quiller Memorandum' with George Segal, Alec Guinness and George Sanders.

In 1968, he was back working with Ingmar Bergman on the psychological horror tale 'Hour of the Wolf' in which he played a painter married to Liv Ullmann's character living on a remote island. The film initially got negative reviews in Sweden and elsewhere but has grown in stature over the years.

Bergman, Ullmann and Von Sydow teamed up again on another 1968 movie 'Shame' about politically detached violinists involved in a relationship who suddenly have to adjust to a civil war, drawing rave reviews from American critics like Pauline Karl and Roger Ebert who felt it resonated at a time when the US was embroiled in the Vietnam War.

The Swedish director Lars-Magnus Lundgren also cast him in an adaptation of Peder Sjogren's 1944 novel 'Black Palm Trees'. 

Von Sydow played a man coming to terms with the disintegration of his marriage in Bergman's acclaimed 1969 drama 'The Passion of Anna' which also starred Ullmann and Bibi Andersson.

There was also a role in Johan Bergenstrahle's drama 'Made in Sweden' with Lena Granhagen,  which captured the Berlin Film Festival's Silver Bear.

The veteran American director John Huston coaxed him into playing a Soviet Colonel in the star studded 1970 espionage thriller 'The Kremlin Letter' which also featured Orson Welles, Patrick O'Neal, Bibi Andersson, George Sanders, Micheal Mac Liammoir and Richard Boone which drew mixed notices.

He would work with Huston again in the 1981 World War II football fantasy 'Escape to Victory', playing a Nazi Major opposite Sylvester Stallone, Michael Caine, Bobby Moore and Pele. 

Back in Sweden, in Lasxlo Benedek's 1971 psychological thriller 'The Night Hunter', he played an inmate by the name of Satan in an asylum who escapes to the family farm run by his younger sisters played by Liv Ullmann and Hanne Bork. 

Jan Troell cast him once again opposite Ullmann as a farmer in his 1971 movie 'The Emigrants' which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Feature, earning more rave reviews from American critics like Vincent Canby, Karl and Ebert.

He reprised the role of Karl Oskar in Troell's sequel a year later alongside Ullmann in 'The  New Land' which made the Oscar shortlist for best Foreign Language Feature, earning more rave reviews in the US including from the novelist Philip Roth and capturing a Golden Globe.

Bergman directed Von Sydow, Bibi Andersson, Elliot Gould and Sheila Reed in 'The Touch' in which he played a cuckolded husband but the film drew poor reviews.

There was a plum role in 1973 in a four part adaptation in a TV miniseries of the classic Swedish novel 'Kvartstten som Sprangdes' ('The Quartet Exploded') by Birger Sjoberg.

However he was to turn in one of his most iconic cinematic performances that year in William Friedkin's horror movie classic 'The Exorcist' with Linda Blair, Jason Miller, Ellen Burstyn, Lee K Cobb and Jack MacGowran.

His performance as Father Lankaster Merrin would earn him his second Golden Globe nomination - this time in the Best Supporting Actor category and he would retire the role in John Boorman's poorly received 1976 sequel 'Exorcist 2: The Heretic' with Linda Blair, Richard Burton and Louise Fletcher.  

Von Sydow would also turn in a memorable performance as the assassin G Joubert opposite Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway and Cliff Robertson in Sydney Pollack's acclaimed hit thriller 'Three Days of the Condor'.

The rest of the decade would see him play the president of the Supreme Court in Francesco Rossi's surreal 1976 thriller 'Illustrious Corpses', a captain of a ship carrying Jews fleeing Germany in Stuart Rosenberg's Oscar nominated 1976 drama 'Voyage of the Damned' with Faye Dunaway, Oskar Werner, Lee Grant, James Mason and Malcolm McDowell, as a missionary in Jan Troell's 1979 romantic adventure 'Hurricane' with Mia Farrow and Jason Robards.

1979 also saw the breakdown of his marriage to Christina Olin and they divorced.

He would work with Bertrand Tavernier in the 1980 sci-fi movie 'Death Watch' with Harvey Keitel and Harry Dean Stanton and took on the role of Ming the Merciless in Mike Hodges' camp classic 'Flash Gordon' with Sam Jones, Topol, Ornella Muti and Brian Blessed. 

In John Milius' hit 1981 swordsmen and sorcerers' epic 'Conan the Barbarian' with Arnold Schwarzenegger, he played King Osric. 

He was reunited with Jan Troell on the 1982 movie 'Flight of the Eagle' which landed him the Best Actor award at the Venice Film Festival for his performance as the real life Swedish North Pole explorer, physicist, engineer and aeronaut Salomon August Andree. 

Having turned down the opportunity to appear in 'Dr No', Von Sydow finally said yes to a 007 film of sorts in Irvin Kershner's successful Sean Connery vehicle 'Never Say Never Again' in 1983 with Klaus Maria Brandaeur and Kim Bassinger.

1984 would turn out to be one of his busiest years on the big and small screen, working with David Lynch on his big screen flop 'Dune' with Kyle McLachlan and Sting and also appearing in Joseph Ruben's sci-fi horror adventure 'Dreamscape' with Dennis Quaid, Kate Capshaw and Christopher Plummer.

Von Sydow also joined Victor Mature and Jose Ferrer in a Emmy and BAFTA nominated  US TV movie for ABC of the classic biblical tale 'Sansom and Delilah'.

Having previously only dabbled in TV, he would throw himself into a number projects in the medium during 1984 and 1985, taking on the role off The Devil in an animated PBS film of Igor Stravinsky and CF Ramuz's 'A Soldier's Tale', appearing in the 'Kojak' TV movie for CBS 'The Belarus File' with Telly Savalas, in Trevor Griffiths' seven part British television adaptation of Roland Huntfird's 'The Last Place On Earth' for ITV with Martin Shaw, Brian Dennehy, Hugh Grant, Bill Nighy and Sylvester McCoy and he also played The King of Portugal in a US and Italian co-production of 'Christopher Columbus' with Gabriel Byrne in the lead role.

There was also a memorable role as The Apostle Peter in Franco Rossi's six episode miniseries 'Quo Vadis?' for Italian, French, Swiss, Spanish and British television which aired on Channel 4 and also starred Klaus Maria Brandaeur, Frederic Forest and Francesco Quinn.

Bergman fanatic Woody Allen would finally get to work with Von Sydow in 1987, casting him as a temperamental artist and Barbara Hershey's partner in one of his best comedies 'Hannah and Her Sisters' featuring Allen, Michael Caine, Mia Farrow, Diane Wiest and Carrie Fisher. 

In Andrei Konchalovsky's well received 1986 drama 'Duet for One', he played a depressed psychiatrist treating Julie Andrews' concert violinist who succumbs to multiple sclerosis.

In 1989 Geoff Murphy directed him, Tom Skerritt and Helen Mirren in 'Red King, White Knight' a Cold War thriller by the Northern Irish writer Ron Hutchinson for HBO in a Primetime Emmy nominated role.

That year Von Sydow picked up his first and only Academy Award nomination in the Best Actor category for Bille August's 'Pelle the Conqueror'.

He lost out to Dustin Hoffman, who bagged the Oscar for his performance as an autistic savant in 'Rain Man', but he would have the consolation of winning the top prize at the Swedish film awards, the Guldbagge.

There was also an appearance as Vigo the Carpathian in Ivan Reitman's 'Ghostbusters 2' with Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson, Rick Moranis and Sigourney Weaver.

The 1990s began with a supporting role alongside Robin Williams, Robert de Niro, Julie Kavner and John Heard in Penny Marshall's Oscar nominated drama 'Awakenings'.

He also took on the role of the narrator in Danish director Lars Von Trier's typically provocative 1990 political drama 'Europa' and was a copper refinery owner in James Dearden's erotic thriller 'A Kiss Before Dying' with Sean Young, Matt Dillon, Diane Ladd  and James Russo. 

Von Sydow directed Tammi Pat in 'Katinka', a Swedish and Danish movie adaptation of Herman Bang's impressionist novel 'Ved Vejen' which was screened in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival and went on to capture Best Director and Best Film at the Guldbagge awards.

He played a priest in a 1990 NBC TV movie 'Hiroshima: Out of the Ashes' with Pat Morita, Mako, Tamilyn Tomita and Judd Nelson which looked at the aftermath of the nuclear bomb attack from the perspective of several characters.

Win Wenders cast him as William Hurt's father in his ambitious, sprawling 1991 futuristic thriller 'Until the End of the World' with Solveig Dommartin, Sam Neill and Jeanne Moreau.

In Bille August's Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or winning 'The Best Intentions', which boasted a script by Ingmar Bergman, he played the father of Pernilla August's Anna who gets romantically involved with Samuel Froler's Henrik Bergman.

There was a chance to play Sigmund Freud in a 1993 episode of 'The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles' for ABC.

Von Sydow also turned in a memorable performance as a psychiatrist called in to help break one of the Soviet Union's most infamous serial killers in Chris Gerolmo's gripping, Emmy award winning HBO movie 'Citizen X' with Stephen Rea, Donald Sutherland and Joss Ackland.

He would be reunited with Sylvester Stallone in Danny Cannon's successful 1995 futuristic comic strip adventure 'Judge Dredd' with Diane Lane, Armand Assante and Jürgen Prochnow.

In 1996, Von Sydow would pick up his third Guldbagge in the Best Actor category for his performance as the Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun in Jan Troell's biopic 'Hamsun' with Ghita Norby and Anette Hoff. 

In Bille August's 1996 Swedish drama 'Jerusalem' with Ulf Friberg, Von Sydow played a vicar alongside an all-star cast with Michael Nyqvist, Pernilla August and Olympia Dukakis. 

Ingmar Bergman directed him one last time as a clergyman opposite Petnilla August in 'Private Confessions', a two part drama for Swedish television which was screened at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section. 

The Italian television station RAI also cast him in 1997 as King David in a three part Biblical  miniseries 'Solomon' with Ben Cross, Vivica A Fox and Anouk Aimee.  

There was also an appearance that year as a Soviet admiral in the taut BBC TV submarine movie 'Hostile Waters' with Martin Sheen, Rutger Hauer and Colm Feore.  

Von Sydow married again in 1997, taking the documentary filmmaker.Catherine Brelet as his wife and becoming a stepfather to her two children. 

There was a role as a tracker in New Zealand director Vincent Ward's 1998 fantasy drama 'What Dreams May Come' with Robin Williams, Joan Chen, Anabella Sciorra and Cuba Gooding Jr. and he also played an attorney in Australian Scott Hicks' disappointing 'Snow Falling on Cedars' with Ethan Hawke, James Cromwell and Richard Jenkins.

In the 2000 Warner Brothers critically acclaimed, award winning miniseries 'Nuremburg' with Brian Cox, Christopher Plummer and Michael Ironside, Von Sydow played a US Government official who President Eisenhower commissions to hire Alec Baldwin's prosecutor in the Nazi war crimes trial. 

He would work with Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise and Colin Farrell in the 2002 futuristic thriller 'Minority Report' and was fulsome in his praise for the director, who he described as a master craftsman. 

Uli Edel directed him in a two part German TV fantasy epic 'Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King' in 2004 with Alicia Witt and Benni Furman in which he played a Pagan blacksmith.

In Juiian Schnabel's enthusiastically receivec 2007 biopic 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly', he played the father of Matthieu Amalric's Jean-Dominique Bauby who suffers from locked-in syndrome.

In 2009 he played Cardinal Von Warburg in four episodes of the hit Showtime hit historical drama series 'The Tudors' with Jonathan Rhys Myers.

That year, he also contributed his voice for the first time in his career to a 'Ghostbusters' video game, reprising the role of Vigo the Carpathian and would do voice work in two other games during his career, as Esbern in the 2011 game 'The Elder Scrolls v Skyrim' and reprising his role as Lor San Tekka in the 'Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens' game  five years later. 

Von Sydow notched up two more Hollywood directing greats before the end of the decade when he appeared alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Kingsley and Michelle Williams in Martin Scorsese's stylush 2009 thriller 'Shutter Island' and as an elderly Knight opposite Russell Crowe's Robin Hood in Ridley Scott's take on the classic English outlaw tale.

In 2012, his performance as The Renter in  Stephen Daldry's 9/11 drama 'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close' earned him his second ever Academy Award nomination -this time in the Best Supporting Actor category but he again, failed to capture the statuette, losing out to Christopher Plummer for his performance as an elderly gay man in 'Beginners'.

There was an amusing guest appearance in a 2014 episode of 'The Simpsons' as Klaus Ziegle, an art forget rumbled by Lisa. 

His performance as the Three Eyed Eagle in three episodes of HBO's 'Game of Thrones'" in 2016 would earn him recognition among new generation fans and a second Primetime Emmy nomination of his career in the Best Guest Actor category.

He was back playing a Soviet admiral in Danish director Thomas Vintenberg's 'Kursk' with Matthias Schoenaerts, Lea Seydoux and Colin Firth.

In 2002, Von Sydow relinquished his Swedish nationality to become a French citizen. He would eventually settle in Provence where he died this week.

An agnostic, Von Sydow told the American broadcaster Charlie Rose that his great collaborator Ingmar Bergman once told him he would contact him after his death to prove there was life after death.

Asked by Rose if Bergman had contacted him from beyond the grave, Von Sydow claimed he had but would not go into the details.

During the interview, he insisted he now believed like Bergman in an afterlife.

But in this life he has left behind a varied and impressive body of work that will live long after his passing.

(Max Von Sydow passed away at the age of 90 on March 8, 2020)