Liv Johanne Ullmann (born 16 December 1938) is a Norwegian actress and filmmaker. Recognised as one of the greatest European actresses of all time, Ullmann is known as the muse and frequent collaborator of filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, whom she dated for five years. She acted in many of his films, including Persona (1966), The Passion of Anna (1969), Cries and Whispers (1972), Scenes from a Marriage (1973), and Autumn Sonata (1978).
Ullmann won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama in 1972 for the film The Emigrants and has been nominated for another four. In 2000, she was nominated for the Palme d'Or for her second directorial feature film, Faithless. She has received two BAFTA Award nominations, and two nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress, for The Emigrants and Bergman's Face to Face. On 25 March 2022, Ullmann was presented with an Academy Honorary Award in recognition of her "bravery and emotional transparency that has gifted audiences with deeply affecting screen portrayals".
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Early life
Liv Johanne Ullmann was born in Tokyo on 16 December 1938, the daughter of Norwegian parents Janna Erbe (née Lund; 1910–1996) and Erik Viggo Ullmann (1907–1945). Her father was an aircraft engineer who was working in Tokyo at the time. Her grandfather helped Jews escape from the Norwegian town where he lived during World War II, and was thus sent to the Dachau concentration camp, where he died. When Ullmann was two years old, she moved with her parents to Canada and settled in Toronto, where her father worked at the Royal Norwegian Air Force base on Toronto Islands during World War II. The family then moved to the U.S. and settled in New York City, where her father died four years later after a lengthy hospitalisation from head injuries due to being struck by an aeroplane propeller, and his death affected her greatly. Her mother worked as a bookseller while raising Ullmann and her sister alone. In 1945 they returned to Norway and lived in Trondheim.
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 Helmer in Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's House.
She became better known once she started to work with Swedish movie director Ingmar Bergman. She later acted, with acclaim, in ten of his movies, including Persona (1966), The Passion of Anna (1969), Cries and Whispers (1972), and Autumn Sonata (1978), in the last of which her co-actress Ingrid Bergman resumed her own 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 (1973), which was also edited to feature-movie length and distributed theatrically. Ullmann also acted with Laurence Olivier in A Bridge Too Far (1977), directed by Richard Attenborough.
Nominated more than forty times for awards, including various lifetime achievement awards, she won the best-actress prize three times from the National Society of Film Critics and 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 1977, when she appeared on Broadway at the Imperial Theatre in Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie, The New York Times said that she "glowed with despair and hope, and was everything one could have wished her to have been" in a performance "not to be missed and never to be forgotten", with her "grace and authority" that was "perhaps more than Garbo...born for Anna Christie:--Or more properly, Anna Christie was born for her."
In 1980, Brian De Palma, who directed Carrie, wanted Ullmann to play the role of Kate Miller in the erotic crime thriller Dressed to Kill and offered it to her, but she declined because of the violence. The role subsequently went to Angie Dickinson. In 1982, Bergman wanted Ullmann to play Emelie Ekdahl in his last feature film, Fanny and Alexander, and wrote the role with her in mind. She declined it, feeling the role was too sad. She later stated in interviews that turning it down was one of the few things she really regretted.
Honours and causes
Ullmann 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.
Ullmann received an honorary degree, a doctorate of philosophy, from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in 2006.
Personal life
Ullmann was married to Norwegian psychiatrist Hans Jakob Stang from 1960 until they divorced in 1965. She was with Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman from 1965 to 1970, becoming his muse and frequent collaborator. They had a daughter, writer Linn Ullmann (born 1966), whose son Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel (born 1990) became a filmmaker.
In 1985, Ullman married American real estate developer Donald Richard Saunders from Boston, and they divorced in 1995 but remained in a relationship.
Performances and works
Film
As actress
As director
Awards and recognition
Honors
1984: Four Freedoms Laureate, Freedom from Want
2006: Ibsen Centennial Commemoration Award
2006: The Danish Poet won its director Torill Kove the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 79th Academy Awards.
2010: 2010 FIAF Award
2012: International Indian Film Academy Awards for Outstanding Contribution to International Cinema
