Carl Adolf von Sydow (1929) Swedish theatre and film actor.
His film career began in 1957 working with Ingmar Bergman on classics such as The Seventh Seal (that includes the iconic scenes in which he plays chess with Death). He went on to play a range of characters in his 150+ movies including Jesus in The Greatest Story Ever Told; Father Lankester Merrin in The Exorcist; Emperor Ming in Flash Gordon; Bond villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld. He also starred in Dune; Hannah and Her Sisters; Minority Report; Needful Things; Shutter Island; Awakenings; The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and many many more...… In 2016, he joined the sixth season of the HBO series Game of Thrones (2011) as the Three-eyed Raven.
The Three-Eyed Raven is no more...sad but he was 90 years old when he passed away...and he re-incarnated himself in Bran Stark, didn't he?
Strange thing that I was actually re-watching Game of Thrones when I heard about his death...
Just a few comments on slimjims post:
1) His name: Well it's true that he was baptized Carl Adolf von Sydow, but he started using Max as his first name from relatively early age, and everybody in the international cinematic world knows him as Max von Sydow.
2) The movies he acted in: He started early and the first film he acted in was director Alf Sjöberg's "Bara en mor" ("Just a mother") from 1949.
While it's true that Max von Sydow's international breakthrough happened in a number of movies by Ingmar Bergman from 1957 on (beginning with "The Seventh Seal"), it's also true that the role that really gave him his place in Swedish hearts was as Karl Oskar Nilsson from Korpamoen, Ljuder parish, in the province of Småland, in director Jan Troell's two movies "Utvandrarna" (eng: "The Emigrants" 1971) and "Nybyggarna" (eng: "The Settlers" 1972), based on Vilhelm Moberg's novelistic tetralogy "Utvandrarna", "Invandrarna", "Nybyggarna" and "Sista brevet till Sverige".
If there is such a thing as a Swedish national epic it's Moberg's tetralogy.
R.I.P. Max von Sydow :heart:
