Maximilian Schell

Swiss actor, theatre director, filmmaker, and musician of Austrian origin who was one of the most internationally-acclaimed German-speaking actors of his generation, earning accolades for his work on both screen and stage.

Born and initially raised in Vienna, his parents were involved in the arts and he grew up surrounded by performance and literature. While he was still a child, his family fled to Switzerland in 1938 when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany, and they settled in Zürich. After the Second World War, Schell took up acting and directing full-time.

Schell won the Academy Award for Best Actor for playing a lawyer in the legal drama Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). He received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations for the NBC film Miss Rose White and the HBO television film Stalin (1992), the latter earned him the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film.

During the 1960s Schell had a three-year-long affair with Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiary, former second wife of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran. He also was rumoured to have been engaged to the first African-American Supermodel Donyale Luna in the mid 1960s. In 1971 he had an affair with Neile Adams, according to her. In 1985, he met the Russian actress Natalya Andrejchenko, whom he married in June 1985; their daughter Nastassja was born in 1989. After 2002, separated from his wife (whom he divorced in 2005), Schell had a relationship with the Austrian art historian Elisabeth Michitsch. In 2008 he became romantically involved with German opera singer Iva Mihanovic, who was 48 years his junior. They eventually married on 20 August 2013.

Maximilian Schell died at the age of 83 on 1 February 2014 in Innsbruck, Austria, after a "sudden and serious illness." The German television news service Tagesschau reported that he had been receiving treatment for pneumonia.

His niece Michelle Schell worked at Astrodienst for several years.