In Remembrance: Ingrid Thulin

     Award-winning Swedish actress Ingrid Thulin died on January 7, 2004 at age 77.

     Born January 27, 1926 in northern Sweden, she studied ballet as a child and attended the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm. She worked in a number of Ingmar Bergman's stage productions before moving to films in the late 40s. Her first film was in 1948 in Dit vindarna bär (Where The Wind Blows).

     Thulin would star in 10 films with the award winning Bergman in the process becoming the most recognized Swedish actresses. Thulin co-starred in Bergman’s 1957 sentimental masterpiece, Wild Strawberries and she earned a Cannes Award for her work. She starred in The Face (1958) and 1962’s Winter Light. She played Ester in Berman’s 1963 classic The Silence and earned the Swedish version of an Oscar, and also starred in the incredibly acted, Cries and Whispers (1972). Thulin also appeared in Bergman’s only foray in the horror film genre, 1968’s Hour of the Wolf.

     Thulin never made a strong impact in America. She appeared opposite Robert Mitchum in Foreign Intrigue (1956) and in the remake of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962), with Glenn Ford in which her voice was dubbed by Angela Lansbury. She also had a role in the 1976 disaster film The Cassandra Crossing. Thulin also starred internationally in the British melodrama Return from the Ashes (1965) with Maximillian Schell and Samantha Eggar. Thulin co-starred with Yves Montand in Alain Resnais’ excellent 1966 film, La Guerre est Finie and co-starred with Dirk Bogarde in Luchino Visconti’s 1968 drama, The Damned.

     Thulin directed three films- Hängivelse (1965), One and One (1978) and Broken Sky (1982). Thulin stayed active in film until 1989. 

     Her second husband Harry Schein was the founder of the Swedish Film Institute. Married in the 1956, the couple divorced in 1989. She lived in Rome since the 1960s, but returned to Stockholm due to illness where she died at age 77.

-John Gibbon