Vale: Max von Sydow

Veteran Swedish actor Max von Sydow best known for The Exorcist, The Seventh Seal & Game of Thrones has died, aged 90.

He died on Sunday at home in France, according to reports.

Von Sydow became Ingmar Bergman’s symbol for the modern man in such films as The Passion of Anna and Shame after making his Bergman debut in The Seventh Seal.

He made his American debut in The Greatest Story Ever Told and went on to make strong impressions in Hannah and Her Sisters, Dune, Three Days of the Condor, Hawaii, Conan the Barbarian and Awakenings.

He was the central figure in 1973’s The Exorcist and would reprise the role of Father Merrin in Exorcist II: The Heretic in 1977.

Amongst his lengthy film credits were Three Days of the Condor, Pelle the Conqueror, The Emigrants The New Land, Kursk: The Last Mission, Star Wars Episode VII — The Force Awakens, Never Say Never Again, Snow Falling on Cedars, Minority Report, Rush Hour 3, Shutter Island and Robin Hood.

TV credits included Game of Thrones as the Three-Eyed Raven plus The Tudors, Nuremberg, Solomon, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, Christopher Columbus, Quo Vadis?.

“Because I am a Swede, not an Englishman or an American, the parts I’m offered are always foreigners. And there aren’t that many American films with nice foreigners. Mostly they’re villains, and villains are usually too much cliche,” he once said.

Source: Variety