Max von Sydow has died

Max von Sydow, star of The Seventh Seal, The Exorcist, Three Days of the Condor, Flash Gordon, Hannah and Her Sisters, Minority Report and so much more, has died at the age of 90.

His family announced “with a broken heart and infinite sadness” that the Swedish-born actor died on Sunday.

In 1955, von Sydow moved to Malmö, Sweden where he met his mentor, Ingmar Bergman. His first work with Bergman occurred on stage at the Malmö Municipal Theatre, and he would go on to work with Bergman on films including The Seventh Seal (Det sjunde inseglet, 1957), Wild Strawberries (Smultronstället, 1957) and The Virgin Spring (Jungfrukällan, 1960). He turned down the chance to play the titular villain in Dr No (1962), and that of Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music (1965).

He had two Golden Globe nominations, for Hawaii in 1966 and The Exorcist in 1973. In the mid-1970s, von Sydow moved to Rome and began to appear in a number of Italian films. In the U.S., he played a memorably professional Alsatian assassin in Three Days of the Condor (1975), a role which won him the KCFCC Award for Best Supporting Actor.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he appeared in Flash Gordon (1980), Conan the Barbarian (1982), Strange Brew (1983), David Lynch’s Dune (1984), and Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters (1986). He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in the Danish film Pelle the Conqueror (1987), which won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor (2012) for Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.

His final role, at the age of 88, was as the Russian admiral Vitaly Petrenko in the 2018 thriller Kursk.

He was a true legend and he will be missed.

What is your favourite Max von Sydow role?