Bibi Anderson

Also born in the Swedish capital, on November 11, 1935, Berit Elisabet Andersson was selected by the prestigious director when she was 16 years old, to star in an advertisement for a detergent. Her experience was so pleasing to her that she decided to dedicate her life to acting, studying dramatic art at the Terserus Theater School, and at the Royal Dramatic Theater School in her hometown. After starting out in the cinema as a dancer in Miss Julie , a version of August Strindberg ‘s work directed by Alf Sjöberg in 1951, she made her stage debut at the Malmö stadsteatern, once again under the direction of Ingmar Bergman .

On the big screen, he gave him a very minor role, as a member of the group of actors who appear in the plot, in Smiles of a Summer Night (1955). She was another interpreter, but with more presence, in the magisterial The Seventh Seal , Maria, a skeptical woman in relation to the apparitions of the Virgin witnessed by her husband, José. She especially shines in a double role in Wild Strawberries , where she was Sara, the protagonist’s childhood love, played by Victor Sjöström , and also another Sara who joins him on her journey, already old.

For a time, he had a romantic relationship with Ingmar Bergman , with whom he would participate in The Face , The Devil’s Eye , Rabies, The Threshold of Life , Herr Sleeman Kommer, and Those Women! , but they separated after Persona , in whose best-known shot the face of the interpreter merges with that of the aforementioned Ullman. She would again be under his orders in Passion , Woodworm and Secrets of a Marriage , for which in total she collaborated in fourteen of his films, counting In the Garden of Earthly Delights (with a script by Bergman, but directed byAlf Kjellin ).

In 1962, Bibi Andersson won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for Best Actress for Vilgot Sjöman ‘s Älskarinnan . Turned into an international star, due to the enormous impact of Bergman’s films, she participated in numerous Hollywood titles, such as The Letter from the Kremlin , by John Huston ; Quintet , by Robert Altman ; A Bait Named Elisabeth , by James Toback ; The Enemy of the People , by George Schaefer , Twice Woman , by George Sluizer , Airport 79: Concorde, by David Lowell Rich , and especially Babette ‘s Feast , by Gabriel Axel . He never got out of the drama. “When I was young everyone around me thought I was very funny. Even my parents and I agreed,” she explained. “She was not pretty enough to be a movie actress, nor dramatic enough to be a tragedy actress, so I always thought that comedy was going to be my destiny. But thanks to Bergman’s movies, which were very serious, even though I was playing the innocent girl, people began to think that I was a very serious person. And when people start treating you a certain way, that’s what you become.”

Separated in 1973 from the screenwriter and director Kjell Grede , father of her only daughter, she was united with the writer and poet Per Axel Ahlmark, and later with Gabriel Mora Baeza, who would accompany her until her death. In 1996 she published her autobiography titled “One Blink”.

Curiously, she came to Spain to participate –as a German married to a Spaniard– in Una estación de paso , by Gracia Querejeta . “I was very surprised when Elías Querejeta called me , who, according to what they told me, was a first-class producer, and it turned out that he had seen films that he had made,” she recalled in an interview. “Then I found the script very interesting because it reminded me of the time when we made real movies, which weren’t necessarily big adventures or dramas but something that reflected things deep inside. Also, the fact that it was directed by a woman and this was his first film, I found it even more interesting ”. Also here she filmed her last work, La escarcha , by Ferran Audí, along with Aitana Sánchez-Gijón and Tristán Ulloa , in 2009. That year she suffered a stroke that paralyzed part of her body, for which she was forced to retire.