Max von Sydow, star of ‘The Exorcist,’ ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘Star Wars,’ dead at 90

Actor Max Von Sydow, who appeared in films and TV series including The Exorcist, Flash Gordon and Game of Thrones, has died at the age of 90.

Variety has confirmed that the actor died on Sunday. His family announced “with a broken heart and infinite sadness” that the Swedish-born actor died on Sunday.

Von Sydow featured in more than 100 films and TV series. His most memorable film roles include Knight Antonius Block in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957), the earliest of 11 films he made with Bergman, which includes iconic scenes in which his character plays chess with Death.

He also played Jesus Christ in George Stevens’ The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), and also appeared in William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, David Lynch’s Dune (1984), Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Penny Marshall’s Awakenings (1990), Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report (2002), Julian Schnabel’s, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007), and Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island (2010). He later appeared in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and in HBO’s Game of Thrones as Three-eyed Raven, for which he received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination.

Carl Adolf von Sydow was born on 10 April 1929 in Lund, Sweden. His father, Carl Wilhelm von Sydow, was an ethnologist and professor of folkloristics at the University of Lund. His mother, Maria Margareta (“Greta”) Rappe, was a schoolteacher. Von Sydow has German ancestry through his mother, who is of Pomeranian descent. Von Sydow was brought up as a Lutheran and later became an agnostic.

Von Sydow attended Lund Cathedral School, where he learned English at an early age. At school, he founded an amateur theatrical group along with some of his friends. He served for two years in the Swedish military with the Army Quartermaster Corps, where he adopted the name “Max” from the star performer of a flea circus he saw.

After completing his service, von Sydow studied at the Royal Dramatic Theatre (Dramaten) in Stockholm, where he trained between 1948 and 1951. During his time at the Dramaten, he helped found a theatre group, of which actress Ingrid Thulin was a member. He also made his screen debuts in Alf Sjöberg’s films Only a Mother (Bara en mor, 1949) and Miss Julie (Fröken Julie, 1951).

In 1955, von Sydow moved to Malmö, where he met his mentor, Ingmar Bergman. His first work with Bergman occurred on stage at the Malmö Municipal Theatre, and he would eventually work with Bergman on eleven films including The Seventh Seal (Det sjunde inseglet, 1957), Wild Strawberries (Smultronstället, 1957) and The Virgin Spring (Jungfrukällan, 1960). In The Seventh Seal, von Sydow is the knight who plays a chess game with Death. The chess scenes and the film were international breakthroughs for actor and director alike.

Critical recognition came as early as 1954 when he was awarded the Royal Foundation Culture Award. He worked profusely on both stage and screen while in Scandinavia, resisting the 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 (1962), von Sydow finally traveled to America after agreeing to star in the film which led to much greater recognition, in the role of Jesus in George Stevens’s all-star epic The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965).

As his talents were soon in demand for other American productions, von Sydow and his family relocated for some time to Los Angeles. From 1965, he became a regular on the American screen while maintaining a presence in his native Sweden. He appeared in John Huston’s The Kremlin Letter (1969), and gave a powerful, quiet performance in Jan Troell’s acclaimed The Emigrants (1971), one of several films in which von Sydow acted alongside Liv Ullmann. Though often typecast as a villain, he was rewarded in the United States with two Golden Globe nominations, for Hawaii (1966) and The Exorcist (1973).

In the mid-1970s, he moved to Rome and appeared in a number of Italian films, becoming friendly with another screen legend, Marcello Mastroianni. In the U.S., von Sydow played a memorably professional Alsatian assassin in Three Days of the Condor (1975), a role which won him the KCFCC Award for Best Supporting Actor.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he appeared in Flash Gordon (1980), Conan the Barbarian (1982), Strange Brew (1983), David Lynch’s Dune (1984), and Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters (1986).

In 1985, he was a member of the jury at the 35th Berlin International Film Festival. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in the Danish film Pelle the Conqueror (1987), which won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Von Sydow has since won the Australian Film Institute’s 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 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. Also in 1993, he appeared as Leland Gaunt in Needful Things. In 1996, he starred in Liv Ullmann’s Private Confessions (Enskilda samtal). Back in Hollywood, he appeared in What Dreams May Come (1998).

He was acclaimed for his role as an elderly lawyer in Scott Hicks’s Snow Falling on Cedars. In 2002, Sydow had one of his largest commercial successes, co-starring with Tom Cruise in Steven Spielberg’s science-fiction thriller Minority Report. In 2003, he played mentor character Eyvind in the European TV adaptation of the Ring of the Nibelung saga. The show set ratings records and was released in the US as Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King. In 2007, Sydow starred in the box-office hit Rush Hour 3. He followed that with Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, based on the memoir by Jean-Dominique Bauby.

Von Sydow appeared in Showtime’s drama series The Tudors, in which he portrayed Otto, Cardinal Truchsess von Waldburg, a German-born clergyman who tries to organize the defeat of King Henry VIII. He also appeared in Martin Scorsese’s 2010 film adaptation of Shutter Island and Ridley Scott’s 2010 adaptation of Robin Hood, playing Robin’s blind stepfather Sir Walter Loxley.

Von Sydow voices Esbern in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which was released on 11 November 2011. He narrated the initial teaser trailer for the game.

In April 2013, von Sydow was honored at the Turner Classic Movie (TCM) Festival in Hollywood, with screenings of two of his classic films, Three Days of the Condor and The Seventh Seal.

In March 2014, von Sydow guest-starred in the animated sitcom The Simpsons, and in 2015, he had a role in the sequel Star Wars: The Force Awakens. In 2016, he joined the HBO series Game of Thrones in Season 6 as the Three-eyed Raven.

In 2017, von Sydow joined the cast of Thomas Vinterberg’s film Kursk, based on the true story of the submarine accident.

Personal life

Von Sydow married actress Christina Inga Britta Olin in 1951. They had two sons, Clas and Henrik, who appeared with him in the film Hawaii. The couple divorced in 1979. He later married documentarian Catherine Brelet in 1997, and adopted Brelet’s two children from a previous marriage.

In 2002, Von Sydow became a citizen of France, at which time he had to relinquish his Swedish citizenship.

Von Sydow was reported to be either an agnostic or an atheist.In 2012, he told Charlie Rose in an interview that Ingmar Bergman had told him he would contact him after death to show him that there was a life after death. When Rose asked von Sydow if he had heard from Bergman, he replied that he had, but chose not to elaborate further on the exact meaning of this statement. In the same interview, he described himself as a doubter in his youth, but stated this doubt was gone, and indicated he came to agree with Bergman’s belief in the afterlife.

Von Sydow was a regular guest of Roy Hodgson’s during Hodgson’s spell as manager of Blackburn Rovers and continued to support the club up until his death in March 2020.

Von Sydow died on 8 March 2020 at the age of 90 at his home in Provence, France.