Anita Bjork

Born on April 25, 1923 in Tällberg (Dalarna), in the center of the country, Anita Barbro Kristina Björk came from a family of actors. At the age of 19 she entered the Dramatens Elevskola (Royal School of Dramatic Art). In 1945 she began an intense theatrical activity under the orders of directors such as the great Ingmar Bergman .

Her first important film was La mujer sin rostro, directed by Gustaf Molander in 1947, in which she played Frida, a woman who, after marrying solely because she had become pregnant, maintains an extramarital affair. But Anita Björk began to be known internationally with Miss Julie , by Alf Sjöberg , which in 1951 shared ex aequo the Grand Prix du Festival, today Palme d’Or, in Cannes, with Miracle in Milan . In this adaptation of August Strindberg ‘s play, she played the role of her, a noblewoman who, depressed by the breakdown of her betrothal, attends a party for her father’s servants and seduces one of her father’s servants. they.

Bergman also counted on her for the cinema in Three Women , where she plays one of the protagonists, three wives who tell a friend about their respective love disappointments. Considered a minor work within the director’s extensive filmography, the truth is that it is one of the most brilliant of his first stage.

Divorced from the actor Olof Bergström –with whom she gave birth to Jonas Bergström , also an actor–, she joined Stig Dagerman, a great promise of Swedish literature, who nevertheless committed suicide when she was only 31 years old. She had had a daughter with him. Subsequently, Anita Bjork had an affair with the British writer Graham Greene .

Anita Björk was part of the cast of Ådalen 31 , which also triumphed at Cannes. She received numerous offers from Hollywood – Alfred Hitchcock tried unsuccessfully to cast her in I Confess – and though she was reluctant to leave her homeland, she starred in Nunnally Johnson ‘s Decision at Midnight opposite Gregory Peck and Broderick Crawford . Unfortunately, the film crashed at the box office, ending the actress’s American career.

In the 1990s, he returned to the orders of Ingmar Bergman in the television productions In the presence of a clown and The Marquise de Sade . She also appeared in two films written by the masterful filmmaker, Private Encounters , by Liv Ullmann , and The Best Intentions , by Bille August , a review of the lives of Bergman’s parents, where she played Queen Victoria. It is seen that in Cannes they still maintained their passion for the actress, since this last title also won the Palme d’Or.