Ingrid Bergman

Ingrid Bergman (29 August 1915 – 29 August 1982) was a Swedish actress whose career stretched across five decades, and she is widely considered one of the most influential figures in film history. Her awards included three Academy Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Tony Award, making her the youngest actor to complete the Triple Crown of Acting and placing her among only four actresses to win at least three competitive acting Oscars (Katharine Hepburn leads with four).

She was born in Stockholm to a Swedish father and a German mother. Bergman started acting in Swedish and German films before catching American attention with the English-language remake of *Intermezzo* (1939). Known for her natural, luminous beauty, she played Ilsa Lund in *Casablanca* (1942). During the 1940s, she earned Academy Award nominations for Best Actress for *For Whom the Bell Tolls* (1943), *Gaslight* (1944), *The Bells of St. Mary's* (1945), and *Joan of Arc* (1948), winning for *Gaslight*. She also worked with Alfred Hitchcock on three films: *Spellbound* (1945), *Notorious* (1946), and *Under Capricorn* (1949).

In 1950, she starred in Roberto Rossellini’s *Stromboli*, which premiered after news broke of her affair with the director. The scandal, compounded by her pregnancy before they married, led her to stay in Europe for several years. During that period, she appeared in Rossellini’s *Europa '51* and *Journey to Italy* (1954); the former won her the Volpi Cup for Best Actress, though the award was not given in 1952 because her voice had been dubbed (by Lydia Simoneschi) in the festival version. It was awarded posthumously in 1992, accepted by her son Roberto Rossellini. She later returned to Hollywood and won two more Academy Awards for *Anastasia* (1956) and *Murder on the Orient Express* (1974). Other notable films from this era include *Indiscreet* (1958), *Cactus Flower* (1969), and *Autumn Sonata* (1978), which brought her a sixth Best Actress nomination.

Bergman won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for Maxwell Anderson’s *Joan of Lorraine* (1947). She also earned two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie: for *The Turn of the Screw* (1960) and *A Woman Called Golda* (1982). In 1974, she learned she had breast cancer but kept working until shortly before her death on her sixty-seventh birthday in 1982. She spoke five languages—Swedish, English, German, Italian, and French—and performed in each. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked her the fourth-greatest female screen legend of Classic Hollywood Cinema.

**Early life**

Ingrid Bergman was born on 29 August 1915 in Stockholm. Her father, Justus Samuel Bergman, was Swedish; her mother, Frieda "Friedel" Henriette Auguste Louise Bergman (née Adler), was German and born in Kiel. The couple married in Hamburg on 13 June 1907. She was named after Princess Ingrid of Sweden. Raised in Sweden, she spent summers in Germany and became fluent in German.

She grew up as an only child, as two older siblings had died in infancy before her birth. Her mother died when Bergman was two and a half. As a child, she invented imaginary friends. Her father hoped she would become an opera star and arranged three years of voice lessons. He sent her to the Palmgrenska Samskolan, a prestigious Stockholm girls’ school, where she was reportedly neither a good student nor popular.

Justus, a photographer, loved capturing his daughter’s birthdays on camera and made her one of his favorite subjects. She enjoyed dancing, dressing up, and performing for his lenses. “I was perhaps the most photographed child in Scandinavia,” Bergman later joked. When she was about fourteen, her father died of stomach cancer. Losing both parents so young was a trauma she described as “living with an ache,” an experience she was not fully aware of.

After her father’s death, she lived with her paternal aunt, Ellen, who died of heart disease six months later. She then moved in with her paternal uncle Otto, his wife Hulda, and their five children. She also visited her maternal aunt, Elsa Adler, whom she called “Mutti” (Mom) according to family stories. Bergman later said, “I have wanted to be an actress almost as long as I can remember,” and she sometimes wore her deceased mother’s clothes and staged plays in her father’s empty studio.

She spoke Swedish and German as first languages, learned English and Italian later while living in the U.S. and Italy, and studied French in school. She acted in all five languages at various points.

Bergman received a scholarship to the state-sponsored Royal Dramatic Training Academy, where Greta Garbo had also studied. After a few months, she was cast in a new play, *Ett Brott* (A Crime), by Sigfrid Siwertz—a move “totally against procedure,” since students were expected to complete three years before getting such roles. During her first summer break, the Swedish film studio Svensk Filmindustri hired her, and she left the Royal Dramatic Theatre after just one year to work in films full-time.

**Career**

**1935–1938: Swedish years**

Bergman’s first film experience was as an extra in the 1932 film *Landskamp*, which she described as “walking on holy ground.” Her first speaking role was a small part in *Munkbrogreven* (1935), playing Elsa, a maid in a seedy hotel pursued by the leading man, Edvin Adolphson. Critics called her “hefty and sure of herself” and “somewhat overweight … with an unusual way of speaking her lines.” The unflattering striped costume she wore may have contributed to the unfavorable reviews.