Ingrid Bergman

Swedish actress who starred in a variety of European and American films, television movies, and plays. With a career spanning five decades, Bergman is often regarded as one of the most influential screen figures in cinematic history. She won Best Actress Oscars for Gaslight in 1945 and Anastasia in 1957, and the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for Murder on the Orient Express in 1974. She won a Tony for Joan of Lorraine in 1947 and Emmy awards for Turn of the Screw in 1960 and A Woman Called Golda in 1962. Throughout her career, she received a total of seven Oscar nominations.

Her father, Justus, a frustrated artist, ran a camera shop in Stockholm. When she was three, her mother died at 33. From that time on she was raised by a confusing succession of prim Lutheran aunts, rich Nazi aunts and her dad's young mistress. From the time she was a kid, she insisted on the theater, taking classes at the Royal Dramatic School in Stockholm, and made a debut at 18 in legitimate theater.

Her first love was the play's leading man, Edvin Adolphson. He was unavailable, married with a family, so she married, instead, eight-year-older dentist Peter Lindstrom, in 1937. They had a daughter, Pia, who was greatly neglected during the formative years of the Bergman legend.

In 1934, Bergman made her film debut. By her second film, reviews reached American and Variety magazines. In 1939, Bergman sailed for New York on the Queen Mary. "I could not live in Sweden," she said, "It is too far from the rest of the world psychologically." She was, nonetheless, Swedish to the core, from her appearance to her romantic notions, from her earthy forthrightness to her emotional strength.