Liv Johanne Ullmann is a Norwegian actress and film director.
Ullman is also one of the "muses" of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman.
Nominated five times for a best actress Golden Globe Award, winning the Golden Globe Award
for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama during 1972 for the drama movie The Emigrants,
Ullmann has also been nominated for the Palme d'Or, twice for the Academy Award, and twice
for a BAFTA Film Award.
Early life Ullmann was born in Tokyo, Japan, the daughter
of Viggo Ullmann, a Norwegian aircraft engineer who was working in Tokyo at the time, and
Janna, also Norwegian.
When she was two years old, the family relocated to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where her father
worked at the Norwegian air force base on Toronto Island during World War II.
Four years later, her father died of a brain tumor, an event that affected her greatly.
Career Ullmann began her acting career as a stage
actress in Norway during the mid-1950s.
She continued to act in theatre for most of her career, and became noted for her portrayal
of Nora in Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's House, but became better known once she started to
work with Swedish movie director Ingmar Bergman.
She later acted, with acclaim, for 10 of his most-admired movies, including Persona, The
Passion of Anna, Cries and Whispers and Autumn Sonata, in which her co-actress, Ingrid Bergman,
resumed her Swedish cinema career.
She co-acted often with Swedish actor and fellow Bergman collaborator, Erland Josephson,
with whom she made the Swedish television drama, Scenes from a Marriage, which was also
edited to feature-movie length and distributed theatrically.
Ullmann acted with Laurence Olivier in A Bridge Too Far, directed by Richard Attenborough.
Nominated more than 40 times for awards, including various lifetime achievement awards, she won
the best actress prize three times from the National Society of Film Critics, three times
from the National Board of Review, received three awards from the New York Film Critics
Circle and a Golden Globe.
During 1971, Ullmann was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for the movie
The Emigrants, and again during 1976 for the movie Face to Face.
Ullmann made her New York City stage debut in 1975 also in A Doll's House.
Appearances in "Anna Christie and Ghosts followed, as well as the less than successful musical
version of I Remember Mama.
This show, composed by Richard Rodgers, experienced numerous revisions during a long preview period,
then closed after 108 performances.
She also featured in the widely deprecated musical movie remake of Lost Horizon during
1973.
In 1980 Brian De Palma, who directed Carrie, wanted Liv Ullmann to play the role as Kate
Miller in the erotic crime thriller Dressed to Kill and offered her the role, but she
declined because of the violence.
The role then went on to Angie Dickinson.
In 1982 Ingmar Bergman wanted Ullmann to play the main role as Emelie Ekdahl in his last
feature film, Fanny and Alexander, and wrote this role for her with this in mind.
But Ullmann felt this role was too sad and declined.
Liv Ullmann later stated in interviews that turning down the role was one of the few things
she really regrets.
During 1984 she was chairperson of the jury at the 34th Berlin International Film Festival,
and during 2002 chaired the jury of Cannes Film Festival.
She introduced her daughter, Linn Ullmann, to the audience with the words: "Here comes
the woman whom Ingmar Bergman loves the most".
Her daughter was there to receive the Prize of Honour on behalf of her father; she would
return to serve the jury herself during 2011.
In 2004 Ullmann revealed that she had gotten an offer in November 2003 to play in the popular
American show, Sex and the City.
Ullmann was amused by the offer and said that it was one of the few she actually regularly
watched, but she turned down the offer.
Later that year Steven Soderbergh wrote a role specially for Liv Ullmann in the movie
Ocean's 12 and offered her this role, but also this role was turned down by Ullmann.
Ullmann narrated the Canada–Norway co-produced animated short movie The Danish Poet, which
won the Academy Award for Animated Short Film at the 79th Academy Awards during 2007.
In 2008 she was the head of the jury at the 30th Moscow International Film Festival.
She published two autobiographies, Changing and Choices.
During 2012, she attended the International Indian Film Academy Awards in Singapore, where
she was honored for her Outstanding Contributions to International Cinema and she also showed
her movie on her relationship with Ingmar Bergman.
Directing career Ullmann's first film as a director was Sofie,
in which she directed her friend and former co-actor, Erland Josephson.
She later directed the Bergman-composed movie Faithless and reprised her role for Scenes
from a Marriage in Saraband, Bergman's final telemovie.
Faithless garnered nominations for both the Palme d'Or and Best Actress at the Cannes
Film Festival.
During 2006 Ullmann announced that she had been forced to end her longtime wish of making
a movie based on A Doll's House.
According to her statement, the Norwegian Film Fund was preventing her and writer Kjetil
Bjørnstad from pursuing the project.
Australian actress Cate Blanchett and British actress Kate Winslet had been cast intended
in the main roles of the movie.
She later directed Blanchett in the play A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams,
at the Sydney Theatre Company in Sydney, Australia, which was performed September through October
2009, and then continued from 29 October to 21 November 2009 at the John F. Kennedy Center
for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., where it won a Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding
Non-resident Production as well as actress and supporting performer for 2009.
The play was also performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in Brooklyn, New York.
In 2013 it was announced that Ullmann would direct a film adaptation of Miss Julie.
The film, set to be released in 2014, stars Jessica Chastain, Colin Farrell and Samantha
Morton.
Personal life In addition to Norwegian, Ullmann speaks Swedish,
English and other European languages.
Ullmann has been married and divorced twice.
Her first marriage was to Hans Jacob Stang, a Norwegian psychiatrist, whom she divorced
during 1965.
According to her biographer, Ketil Bjørnstad, the marriage was marred by infidelities on
both sides.
She had a long affair with her colleague, Ingmar Bergman, from 1965-70.
One result of the affair was her only child, Linn Ullmann, born 9 August 1966.
During the 1980s, she married Boston real estate developer Donald Saunders, whom she
divorced during 1995.
The couple continued to live together until 2007.
She is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and has traveled widely for the organization.
She is also co-founder and honorary chair of the Women's Refugee Commission.
In 2005, King Harald V of Norway made Ullmann a Commander with Star of the Order of St.
Olav.
IN 2006, she received a PhD honoris causa from the Norwegian University of Science and
Technology.
Filmography The Danish Poet won its director Torill Kove
the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 79th Academy Awards.
Awards 2006: Ibsen Centennial Commemoration Award
2012: International Indian Film Academy Awards for Outstanding Contribution to International
Cinema See also
List of film and television directors List of theatre directors in the 20th-21st
centuries List of Norwegian actresses
List of Norwegian writers References
Further reading Robert Emmet Long, ed..
Liv Ullmann: Interviews.
University Press of Mississippi.
ISBN 1-57806-823-1, 1-57806-824-X.
Collected interviews with Ullmann.
David Outerbridge.
Without Makeup, Liv Ullmann: A Photo-Biography.
New York City: William Morrow and Company.
ISBN 0-688-03441-1.
Liv Ullmann.
Changing.
New York City: Knopf.
ISBN 0-394-41148-X.
Autobiography.
Liv Ullmann.
Choices.
New York: Knopf.
ISBN 0-394-53986-9.
ISBN 978-0-394-53986-7.
Autobiography.
External links Liv Ullmann at the Internet Broadway Database
Liv Ullmann at the Internet Movie Database Liv Ullmann at the Notable Names Database
Liv Ullmann at the TCM Movie Database Works by or about Liv Ullmann in libraries
Liv Ullmann collected news and commentary at The New York Times
The Guardian/NFT interview with Shane Danielson, 23 January 2001
Peter Bradshaw review of Trolösa, The Guardian, 9 February 2001
A 1980 Interview for the Yugoslav Television on YouTube