Bio
Max is an award-winning Swedish actor perhaps best known to international audiences as Father Lankester Merrin in the 1973 thriller The Exorcist, and more recently as Lamar Burgess in the Steven Spielberg film Minority Report.
Von Sydow was born to a noble family in Lund, Skåne, Sweden. His father, Carl Wilhelm von Sydow, was a professor of comparative folklore at the University of Lund. His mother, Friherrinnan (Baroness) Greta Rappe, was a school teacher.
Persistent rumours claim he had at least one brother who allegedly died during the filming of The Exorcist, but he was an only child. Little material is available on his childhood, except that he seems to have been a shy, quiet child.
He attended the Cathedral School of Lund, and learned German and English starting at the age of nine. At school, he and some friends founded an amateur theatre company, where his acting career began.
He completed National Service before going on to study at The Royal Dramatic Theatre ("Dramaten") in Stockholm, where he trained between 1948 and 1951 with the likes of Lars Ekborg, Margaretha Krook and Ingrid Thulin.
During his time at Dramaten, he made his screen debut in Alf Sjöberg's films Only a Mother (Bara en Mor, 1949), and Miss Julie (Fröken Julie, 1951), a Swedish classic after August Strindberg.
Von Sydow moved to Malmö in 1955. It was there that he met his mentor Ingmar Bergman. His first work with Bergman was on stage at Malmö Municipal Theatre.
Von Sydow later would work with Bergman on films such as The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde inseglet, 1957), Wild Strawberries (Smultronstället, 1957) and The Virgin Spring (Jungfrukällan, 1960).
It was in these films that von Sydow perfected his craft and began to display the great talent that has spanned the 53 years of his screen career. Von Sydow now dominated the screen as he had done on stage and in doing so became an idol of the international Arthouse. Recognition came as early as 1954 when he was awarded the prestigious Royal Foundation Culture Award.
Von Sydow worked profusely on stage and screen in Scandinavia and resisted increasing calls from the United States to go to Hollywood.
After being seen in Bergman's Academy Award-winning films and having been first choice for the title role of Dr. No, Von Sydow finally set foot in America after agreeing to star in the film which was to lead to much greater recognition, the role of Jesus in George Stevens' grandly titled, all-star epic The Greatest Story Ever Told in 1965.
His talents were soon in demand in other American productions so von Sydow and his family eventually moved to Los Angeles.
From 1965 von Sydow became a regular on the American screen while also maintaining a presence in his native Sweden. Though perhaps type-cast as a villain, he was rewarded in the United States with two Golden Globe nominations for Hawaii and The Exorcist in 1973.
In the mid 1970s, von Sydow moved to Rome and appeared in a number of Italian films, becoming friendly with another screen legend, Marcello Mastroianni.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, von Sydow appeared in both serious films, such as Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and David Lynch's Dune (1984), and silly ones like the Mackenzie Brothers' Strange Brew (1983).
Since then von Sydow has won The Australian Film Institute Best Actor Award for his title role in Father (1989), the Guldbagge Best Director Award for his only directorial foray Katinka (Ved vejen, 1988), based on a novel by Herman Bang, and the Best Actor Award at The Tokyo International Film Festival for The Silent Touch (Dotkniecie reki, 1993).
He received international acclaim for his performance as the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Knut Hamsun in Jan Troell's biopic Hamsun. He received his third Swedish Guldbagge and his second Danish Bodil for his depiction of a character often described as his King Lear.
In 1996 Von Sydow starred in Liv Ullmann's Private Confessions (Enskilda samtal). Back in Hollywood, he appeared in What Dreams May Come in a role which was something of a tip of the hat to his performance in The Exorcist.
His most recent triumph is probably his performance as an elderly lawyer in Scott Hicks' Snow Falling on Cedars. Pre-Oscar talk had him tipped to scoop the Best Supporting Actor Award; however, this never came to fruition.
In 2002, von Sydow had one of his largest commercial successes, co-starring with Tom Cruise in Steven Spielberg's widely popular sci-fi thriller Minority Report.
In 2003, he played mentor character Eyvind in the European TV adaptation of the "Ring of the Nibelungs" saga. The show set ratings records and was released in the USA as "Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King."