Ingrid Thulin

Ingrid Lilian Thulin was a Swedish actress and director born in Sollefteå, Ångermanland, northern Sweden, the daughter of Nanna (née Larsson) and Adam Thulin, a fisherman. As a girl she studied ballet, and in 1948 she was accepted by the Royal Dramatic Theatre. Her career spanned Swedish and international film, theater, and television, and she earned recognition from critics in multiple countries.

Thulin became closely associated with filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, appearing in a succession of his films over more than a decade. Her credits with Bergman include Wild Strawberries (1957), The Magician (1958), Winter Light (1962), The Silence (1963), The Rite (1969), and Cries and Whispers (1972). In The Magician she spent much of the film dressed as a boy. Her performance in Brink of Life brought her a shared Best Actress award at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival, and her work in The Silence earned her the inaugural Guldbagge Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role in 1964, the first year the award was presented. She received a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actress for Cries and Whispers.

Beyond her work with Bergman, Thulin appeared in Luchino Visconti's 1968 historical epic The Damned, set in Nazi Germany, for which she received a National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress. In 1976 she appeared in Tinto Brass's Salon Kitty. She also won a David di Donatello Award in 1974. In 1980 she served as head of the jury at the 30th Berlin International Film Festival.

Thulin brought her work to the stage as well, appearing on Broadway in 1967 in Of Love Remembered. Her stage appearance marked one of her notable ventures outside of film during that period.

In her personal life, Thulin was married for more than thirty years to Harry Schein, founder of the Swedish Film Institute, before their divorce in 1989, though they had lived separately for years prior. She purchased an apartment in Paris in the early 1960s and later a beach house in San Felice Circeo, Italy. In 1970 she became a resident of Sacrofano, Italy, where she lived for thirty-four years. Her memoir, Någon jag kände (Somebody I Knew), was published in 1992 by Norstedts Förlag.

Thulin returned to Sweden for medical treatment and died of cancer in Stockholm on 7 January 2004. She is buried in her hometown of Sollefteå, whose municipality has awarded the Ingrid Thulin Memorial Scholarship annually since 2008. Valued at SEK 20,000 and open to applicants pursuing the arts, the scholarship is sponsored by actress Harriet Andersson, a longtime personal friend of Thulin.