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the players
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bibi andersson
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harriet andersson
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g. bj�rnstrand
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ingrid thulin
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liv ullmann
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max von sydow
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The Magic Works of Ingmar Bergman is now located at www.bergmanorama.com. Please update your bookmarks. Thank you for visiting!
 HARRIET ANDERSSON
Harriet Andersson's acting career began in the music hall and in juvenile supporting roles in films, before Bergman cast her (aged 20) as the title character in Summer with Monika (1953): "apparently sluttish, shallow, and self-centered, the character is redeemed (both for Bergman and for the audience) partly by the film's graphic account of her squalid, miserable background, but more by her spontaneous, animal-like physicality" (Robin Wood). Bergman and Andersson continued an on-and-off-screen collaboration for another four films from 1952-55. It is these works which established her as a Bergman star: in them, "there is a common denominator to all her seemingly very diverse characterizations: sensuality" (Robin Wood). Since then, Andersson has divided her time between stage, television, and screen, including films with such directors as Mai Zetterling and J�rn Donner (whom she married). She has returned to work for Bergman on several occasions: as a schizophrenic in Through a Glass Darkly (1961); and harrowing as the dying Agnes in Cries and Whispers (1972). She also appeared as the kitchen maid, Justina, in Fanny and Alexander (1982), creating a "classic mad, spying, tattling enemy of children" (Pauline Kael).
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| Born: |
14 January 1932, in Stockholm, Sweden. |
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| Education: |
Terserus Drama School; Royal Dramatic Theatre School, Stockholm, 1954-56; attended theatre school in Malm�. |
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| Family: |
Married J�rn Donner, 1960s (divorced). |
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| Career: |
 1949: stage debut in Stockholm revue.
1952: appeared in Summer with Monika, which Bergman wrote for her.
1954: engaged by Bergman for regular stage company, Malm�.
1956: acted with Intiman Theatre of Stockholm.
1961: acted with H�lsingborg Town Theatre.
1980s: appeared regularly at Kungliga Dramatiska Teatern, Stockholm.
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| BERGMAN FILMS |
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| Harriet Andersson has appeared in the following Bergman-directed films: |
| COMMENTARY |
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"I was no little infatuated with Harriet�oh yes, we took our time when trying out costumes!....There's never been a girl in Swedish films who radiated more uninhibited erotic charm than Harriet."
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"[Bergman's] repertoire of actresses is unique to movies.
Ingrid Thulin, Harriet Andersson, Liv Ullmann are an austere and solid group, without cajolery or coquettishness, rather like the women who pioneered in the American West. Their perceptions, conversations, and gestures indicate an intelligence with which Hollywood has always been impatient. For introspection, without snappy wit or glibness, leans heavily on our concepts of 'entertainment' and also of femininity. It's an anti-box-office intellect, and these are anti-box-office women. They care nothing for St. Laurent clothes or wood-paneled dishwashers but take themselves and the quality of their lives seriously."
� Marjorie Rosen, Popcorn Venus (1973)
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"I keep half of my head full of feeling, and the other half full of technical concerns."
� Harriet Andersson
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"I like to go to my work early in the morning like anyone else. Then, when it's finished, I can go home and lead my own life. If you are a star you can never have this liberty."
� Harriet Andersson
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"Harriet Andersson and I have worked together all through the years. She is an unusually strong but vulnerable person, with a streak of brilliance in her gifts. Her relationship to the camera is straight and sensual. She is also technically superb and can move like lightning from the most powerful empathy to conveying sober emotions; her humour is astringent but never cynical; she is a lovely person and one of my dearest friends."
� Ingmar Bergman, The Magic Lantern (1987)
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"By the standards we have come to expect of Swedish actresses, Harriet Andersson is something of an outsider: a little coarse, sensual, dark, and slatternly, a creature of more homespun sensibility: thus, her fame was based originally on the arbitrary, sexy working girl, Monika, in Summer with Monika (52)....After Summer with Monika, she made several [more] films for Bergman, invariably representing the sensual 'lower' woman: first as the circus girl in Sawdust and Tinsel (53); A Lesson in Love (54); Dreams (55); and Smiles of a Summer Night (55). After that, she made three more films with Bergman: superb as the schizophrenic in Through a Glass Darkly (61); in All These Women (64); and as the dying sister in Cries and Whispers (72). If she did not work for him much more it may be because of her marriage to director J�rn Donner, a man more disposed to drawing out her vitality."
� David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film (2002)
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