Liv Ullman

Liv Johanne Ullmann was born on December 16, 1938 in Tokyo, Japan, the second of two sisters. But let no one be fooled, she is a Norwegian actress through and through, whose father’s profession as an engineer, which forced him to travel frequently, led her to see the light of day for the first time by chance in the country of the rising sun. Her mother remembered two things about her delivery: the image of a mouse running across the hospital floor, which she interpreted as a sign of good luck, and the nurse’s comment saying “I’m afraid it’s a girl, do you prefer to report it yourself?” to her husband?”. The pain shook her at a very young age, she was only six years old when her father died of a brain tumor, almost at the same time as her paternal grandfather, a prisoner in the Dachau concentration camp, all in full swing. Second World War.

To find out about the early life of the actress and director, her memoir “Changing”, published in 1976, is essential. In said book, Ullmann recalled that her writing had been purely casual, the result of responding to a jerk journalist, who asked him what I was busy lately, that I was preparing an autobiography. It wasn’t true, and he doesn’t really know why he had that outing, but shortly after the interview was published, offers for the rights rained down on him, and he had to get down to work, even though the task was very arduous, despite to his fervent desires to attack her. And it is that they were years of a lot of acting work, where she travels continuously, from Norway to the United States. The book is surprisingly intimate, a kind of confidence to the reader about her longing for happiness,

As a child, Liv undertook theater productions at school. She also enjoyed movies, and she mentions Limelight and Miracle in Milan as her titles . “I watched them ten or twenty times and the charm was real every time. Heroes and heroines. People who were good or bad. Hardly ever boring and ordinary people like the ones she knew in Trondhjem”, she stated. She was not a very good student, and sometimes she would pretend to be sick to avoid classes. But she highlighted her imagination and she loved to read, “books have always been living things to me,” she wrote.

When Ullmann saw that her vocation led her to prepare to be an actress, such an approach did not go down well with her family. There was a certain pedigree among the family, with some relative who had even been a parliamentarian, so that her dedication to the world of show business was not well seen, she was generally considered a flaw in the clan flag, especially by line paternal. In any case, Liv left school at the age of 17. She would study acting in England, in London, taking classes from Irene Brent. That year, and the next in Oslo, making her first theater auditions, were somewhat painful, young Liv experiencing loneliness and failure in her efforts to land roles. But in the end she would come the joy of a contract that she brought to Stavenger, and the possibility of interpreting Anne Frank herself on stage. His composition would be highly applauded by critics, who claimed that “it was Anne Frank”. And it is that she herself had the feeling, that she would always take her roles, that she was not pretending, but that she was the character that she had to represent. At that time, she was thus demonstrated not only her beauty, but her ability to get into other people’s skin. She would always be linked to her work, with works that made her shine, such as Ibsen’s “Dollhouse”.

Meanwhile, in cinema he would have his first important role in 1960, in Young Escape , by Edith Carlmar, about a couple in love whose relationship is not well regarded by his family; The film would not be well received by much of Ullmann’s family either, among other things because she appeared nude in some scenes. According to the actress, a great-uncle came to ask the director of Oslo Cinemas to suspend the screening of the film in his theaters.

In 1960 Liv married the Norwegian psychiatrist Hans Jacob Stang. In her memories, she hints at their immaturity when she refers to her shyness when going to buy her rings for the wedding, not to openly tell the woman who served them that they were for them. “Security”, feelings like “brother and sister”, is how Liv describes a marriage that would last five years. In fact, she argued before the marriage counselor, as the cause of her divorce, the frustration that “they were just friends.” In the meantime, she pursues a successful career as a theater and film actress. In 1962 she works with who she would be her friend, Bibi Andersson , in Kort är sommaren . When the opportunity arises in 1966 for both of them to work together with Ingmar Bergman in Persona, Liv will not hesitate for a moment. An intense professional and affective relationship will emerge between her and Ingmar with emotional ups and downs but great artistic achievements, and the birth of a daughter, Linn. The director assured in his book “Magic Lantern” that then “passion reached Liv and me” and described Ullmann’s testimony in “Changing” about their relationship as “lovingly correct. (…) We fought our demons as best we could”. In their years of living together on the island of Fårö, they shoot Shame (1968) , Passion (1969), Cries and Whispers (1972), Secrets of a Marriage (1973). As usual in Bergman cinema, her problems in real life are reflected as in a mirror in her cinema, the title ofSecrets of a marriage is quite significant. The end of their relationship did not mean “the end” in their fruitful artistic collaboration, films such as Face to Face (1976) -for which she was nominated for an Oscar- The Serpent’s Egg (1977), the only film shot in English , would come later. by Bergman, a look at the Germany that became Nazi, and Autumn Sonata (1978), tremendous dissection of the relationship between a mother and her daughter, where Ingrid Bergman herself replied to Ullmann in a film that united the two Bergman most famous in the world, who were not related despite the coincidence of surnames. Private Encounters (1996) and Unfaithful (2000), films that show Ullmann’s facet as a director, were based on scripts by Bergman, and of course they found inspiration in their common experience where love and hate had alternated, they were both interested in the same themes, that which weaves the tapestry of human existence. Finally , Saraband (2003), a jewel that closes Bergman’s filmography as a director, and which was shot in Fårö, took up the characters from Secretos de un matrimonio .

Not only with Bergman did Ullmann work on the screen. With Jan Troell , also Swedish, he made The Emigrants (1971), which earned him an Oscar nomination, and The New Land (1972), where he repeated the character. He was accompanied in the cast by Max von Sydow , the actor with whom he has worked the most, as well as Erland Josephson . The truth is that Ullman’s career on the screens is marked by his relationship with Ingmar Bergman , but it must also be emphasized that he has never indulged in frivolity, he has always been involved in stories that have somehow interested him, even in his work. in English more or less related to Hollywood, either the unusualCold Sweat (The Devil’s Companions) (1970), where he was with Charles Bronson and James Mason , or Pope Joan (1972), Forty Carats (1973), Lost Horizons (1973) and A Bridge Far Away (1977).

In the 1980s, Ullmann continues to work actively, although his films may have diminished in interest and intensity. In addition to remarrying Donald Richard Saunders, she is in such human interest titles as The Boy from the Bay (1984) and Gaby, a True Story (1987).

In 1991 he works for who had been his usual cinematographer, Sven Nykvist , in Oxen . But clearly in the 90s what stands out the most about Ullmann is his decision to get behind the camera. Her debut is Sofie (1992), and she is followed by Cristina, daughter of Lavrans (1995), an adaptation of the famous trilogy by her compatriot Sigrid Undset. Then the already mentioned Bergmanian stories would come. Virtually retired today, she accepted the role of grandmother in I et speil i en gåte (2008), an adaptation of a novel by another popular Norwegian writer, Jostein Gaarder .