Erland Josephson

A longtime friend of Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, actor Erland Josephson starred in six of the director's best films, including The Passion of Anna (1970), Cries and Whispers (1972), Scenes From a Marriage (1973), and Fanny and Alexander (1982). In these films and others, the aristocratic Josephson came to embody one type of Bergman protagonist: the modern neurotic man, aloof, introspective, and thoroughly self-centered. Writing under the nom de plume of Buntel Erik, Josephson co-scripted The Pleasure Garden (1961) with Bergman and All These Women (1964), and under his own name has penned several novels, poems and plays. Active in films outside his native Sweden, Josephson's most famous non-Bergman film role was in the U.S. production The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988); he also played prominent parts in Dusan Makavejev's Montenegro (1981) and Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books (1991). From 1966 through 1975, Josephson was in charge of Stockholm's Royal Dramatic Theater. He died at age 88 following a long struggle with Parkinson's Disease.