Original subtitles

Not since Greta Garbo has a Scandinavian

received an honorary Oscar.

I am proud. I'm extremely proud.

To be honest I'm extremely honest.

I know Garbo and I are the only ones.

Liv Ullmann, a goddess of acting

and directing.

Everyone talks about Liv's eyes,

and my God, you could just fall into them.

It's because she's always looking out at the world

with sort of a face of unconditional love.

...ladies and gentlemen, Liv Ullmann!

There's a very short list of actors who can affect you

the way Liv Ullmann did,

which is just to invite you right into their emotional life.

I don't know what that magic was, but it was hypnotic and compelling.

I was in love with her before I met her.

She plays female characters who feel human.

They're complex and there can be some flaws.

She celebrates brokenness in a way,

because when something breaks and is healed, it's more beautiful.

That has given me tremendous richness in my life,

that I have never been a star

and I have never had a need to be a star,

but I've been in the company of the most incredible people.

We are telling our stories

and where we connect, that's what it's about to be a human being.

Liv will be saying: "Why am I getting this now?"

"I have so much more to do."

She should've won an Oscar a long time ago.

She should have multiple Oscars on her shelf.

For those few who claim she wouldn't be called

one of our greatest actors without Ingmar Bergman,

I would answer: Bergman wouldn't be called

one of our greatest filmmakers without Liv Ullmann.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Liv, we are looking at something.

It's strange. In our family, when we were confirmed

in our religion,

mother and father made a book called "Your childhood" and...

My mother finished it. I was 15 when I was confirmed.

My father died when I was...

...six.

I'm shivering. I didn't know then that one day some

old lady is going to look at this and come completely close to

who I was, and that's part of, I think...

When you're old, your childhood really comes back.

I was born in Japan

because my father was an engineer there.

When I was born the nurses said to my mother:

"It's a girl, shall we tell your husband?"

It's still that way today when people ask me:

"Why are you doing what you are doing?"

"What man was Ingmar Bergman,

the one who kind of gave you all your thoughts and your fantasy?"

It's still like that.

"I'm afraid. It's a girl, but men can help her."

Before Pearl Harbor we got out of Japan,

during the Second World War.

We went to a training camp for pilots

that went back to the war in Europe.

My father was a teacher there.

I'm looking at the first page here.

I'm writing to my daddy.

"Look at you, papa. Don't forget me."

"Keep this letter."

It was 1944, and little did I know

that half a year after he was no more there.

A long time ago, in 1976,

I wrote in my book "Changing"...

"When I was little, I was fascinated by the moon.

Never constant, but faithful it looked in on me.

If I woke during the night, there it hung,

pale and mysterious.

If I had been having bad dreams, I would ask the moon

that no one I loved would leave me.

Papa had.

I remember sitting alone with him

before the operation that was to be his last.

Doctors and nurses kept coming and going.

There was bustle and preparation around us.

Yet, I felt as if we were alone.

When he said goodbye in a strange voice,

I knew that we were sharing a secret.

I was six, and I was trying to be brave and not to cry.

My father was in my life for six years

and did not leave me with one real memory of him,

just a great hole.

The void papa's death left in me

became a cavity into which later experiences were to be laid."

I was awkward, thin and didn't talk.

I wasn't especially interesting for people.

I read this story about the little girl

who had nothing,

and I wanted to tell that story to my mom's friend who had a party.

My mother was good and asked her friends:

"My daughter wants to tell us a story, would you like to hear it?"

They wanted to have their drinks, but they said okay.

I told them the story

and I had this beautiful music I put on.

I said:

"Hans Christian Andersen wrote this story

about the little match girl, and it was New Years Eve,

and it was so cold and she was freezing."

They went all quiet and listened.

People are listening, not to me...

They're listening to a story that says something about

who we are and why we are.

I thought: "This is like acting. I want to be an actress."

I went to Oslo to try out for the theatre school,

and I was still not 18.

I was so sure I'd get in.

You do a tryout, and it's fantastic.

And then I come in, and it was incredible what I had thought out.

It's when she takes poison

because she hears that Romeo is dead,

and then you know: "I want to die too."

It's my long monologue from Shakespeare about that.

I start to die and go like this towards the floor,

and I'm dying as I'm also trying to say Shakespeare,

but it was more about me dying. And suddenly

while I'm doing this incredible thing, I was sure,

I hear from the audience

because the jury consisted of six people,

and one was a very famous director, very old,

and she said: "Thank you, what was it, Liv Ullmann that's enough."

I didn't get in.

I couldn't understand that they couldn't see I was a talent.

I went to grandmother and cried.

I was lying in her bed telling her they didn't let me in.

And she embraced me and I felt loved. And the next day...

That was so much more beautiful than the rejection.

I was... It really was.

It's the feeling, not seeing the list of people who got in,

and everybody I saw who got in,

I've followed their career until now.

None of them is sitting doing a movie about themselves.

Then the next day

a man called me and said: "I was told by somebody who was there

watching you doing Julie that I should call you."

He was the head of a provincial theatre, and he said:

"Would you come and be an actress with us?"

And I went to a province of Norway, Stavanger,

and instead of theatre school I had three incredible years

being part of an ensemble, acting immediately.

Don't swear by the moon.

The moonlight is changing...

I look forward to the sense of freedom that comes in the silence

and the laughter from the audience.

It is in that contact I get my reward,

much more than in the applause afterwards.

Long, narrow corridors and dressing rooms

that are small and overcrowded.

The smell of old furniture and stage sets.

The joy of working in a team.

And then they wanted me in films,

and the first one was directed by Edith Carlmar.

-Is it far? -I don't quite remember.

She came to Stavanger to meet me,

and I was to play a kind of wayward girl.

I didn't look like a wayward girl,

but I didn't look like Anne Frank either.

She felt while we were talking that maybe she should ask me:

"Tell me, are you a virgin?"

I thought: "What kind of question is that?"

I didn't know what to say, and I was ashamed that maybe I was...

Maybe I was some kind of virgin. I didn't know. It was embarrassing.

I think I answered her:

You know I'm somehow, but I'm not sure.

I think, because she was a good teacher,

she recognised the contrast in my life

and what I was going to do.

"She's imaginative and her answers were strange."

"I want her."

It's such an innocent movie if you see it today.

I was very shocked because I'd never experienced scandal before.

It wasn't the only occasion,

because there was a picture where you can see a bit of my behind.

I said: "I didn't know. They must have done it without me knowing

sneaking behind some trees or whatever."

Of course I came across really stupid in the papers.

"What is her excuse?"

But this woman director who was so free and knew my dilemma

went to the papers and said: "If I was Liv UIImann

I would have said exactly the same."

That's how we talk when we're ashamed. We try to excuse it.

She was so wonderful.

I'm so honored to be able to introduce - for me -

not just one of the greatest actors of her generation,

but perhaps of any generation, Liv Ullmann.

My best friend in life, Bibi Andersson,

we had done a Swedish movie, in Norway,

and I went to visit Bibi in Stockholm

because we became so close,

and we were walking in the street

when we saw the genius, Ingmar Bergman.

He had heard about me, I think,

because he stopped and talked to Bibi

and looked at me. "I know who you are."

And suddenly he said:

"Would you like to be in one of my movies?"

I was very nervous. I've always admired him as an instructor

and wanted to be in one of his films.

But I'd also heard that he was demonic and terrible.

I am quiet and shy

and I thought that when he got to know me during the filming

it'd be terrible and I'd just want to go home.

He was going to do another movie

and then he went into hospital,

which he usually did when he didn't want to do a movie,

and there I saw a lot of pictures of Bibi and me, and asked for them,

and he got the idea to make this movie about a woman who was

far into middle age, and I was only 25.

And the nurse helped her come back to life,

because she didn't want to deal with life anymore.

Again this was far away from me, as when I did the "Wayward Girl",

but I had no lines, I was this middle aged woman at 25,

but I knew one thing, that Ingmar really felt,

being 21 years older than me,

that was something he thought my face could express.

I was talking about Ingmar,

what Ingmar felt at that time,

being already considered a genius in films.

We never discussed it, but I really thought that then,

and the reason why he for the rest of his life

used me all the time,

was that I could express so much of what he

was working with and had trouble expressing.

We did "Persona" and after being in Stockholm for just one week

he said: "We have to go to this island, Fårö on Gotland,

and we continued the movie there.

I could see sometimes on the camera

he was sitting watching me, but only that.

Towards the end of the movie we were walking on the beach,

and we sat down, and then he said:

"I had a dream last night, that you and I

are painfully connected."

And that was so incredible. And that was a meeting too,

and he was right,

for the rest of our lives we were painfully connected.

We had some years where we lived together because we fell in love.

And then the most beautiful thing of course, I got a daughter,

who is incredible, I love her so much.

She doesn't always realize that,

but I didn't realize that with my mother either,

so that's a family thing.

And every work we did was somehow

tied to the other.

Isn't it the case that when a woman

has lived with a man for a long time

that she becomes like him?

"I love close-ups, to me they are a challenge.

The closer a camera comes,

the more eager I am to show a completely naked face.

Show what is behind the skin.

The eyes inside the head

show the thoughts that are forming.

To work with Ingmar is to go on a journey of discovery

within my old self.

To be able to realize all the things I dreamt of as a girl.

Discard the mask and show what is behind it."

Those long, slow camera movements into her face

that Bergman would do, there is so much life there.

So much joy, so much sorrow, so much pain.

We all contain that in different ways,

but in order for it to show, there has to be an openness

for the camera to see through.

And Liv is a master at that.

It's almost like she has no skin,

so you feel the emotions as she feels them,

there's no middleman. She's not in a scene and thinks

that her character is supposed to do this and then it happens,

it just happens, there's no thought.

And she works from this place of childlike wonder,

innocence and purity.

Anna and Andreas have lived together for a few months.

They live in unassuming happiness

with neither friction nor passion.

But one day Anna suddenly starts talking about her marriage.

We lived in complete affinity.

We think the same thoughts.

I was to tell a man who was in love with me

that I had lived this beautiful love story with my husband.

And he died in a traffic accident

where I was driving the car.

And Ingmar said to me that she's guilty of that accident.

I said no. That's the only time in my life I disagreed with him

him because I didn't feel what she was doing after or before

showed that she wanted to kill her husband.

And he said: "If you don't agree with my manuscript

and you're going to say those words

it's going to be a long close-up,

maybe 10 minutes, and I won't give you any instructions

because you were innocent

and you are going through the whole movie carrying your sorrow.

I just want to tell you one thing,

in the middle of you telling about the accident,

while saying those words I just want you to lean back

and take a long pause

and think about the end before the accident happens,

give it a pause.

Roll camera.

You probably think Andreas and I lived an ideal marriage

but that's not the case.

I'm telling the story of this man that I loved so much,

and I know my longing for him and my love would always live within me.

Here's the pause.

And because it is living within me, during that pause

I begin to think that it was in fact me.

And I'm seeing myself,

and I feel it is happening in my body.

I'm driving,

and my husband has just told me that he's going to leave me.

I don't understand because I know he loves me,

and I feel while I'm acting that things are happening within me,

and at the same time I feel this is incredible,

what is going on? And it's happening,

I'm like two people,

the actress and then the feeling happening inside of me.

And suddenly I see the stones, and I will crash into those stones

because he's leaving me. And I crash into the stones.

And Ingmar was right, she is a murderer,

but he allowed me to find out myself

because that's the kind of actress he knew I was.

Once I get a pause, and don't just go with feelings

I begin seeing what he wrote.

You come in, turn around and say...

That series of films she did with Ingmar Bergman,

they changed the industry,

they changed how we thought about films.

And because she was very much Bergman's muse,

she sort of embodied everything that Bergman meant to people.

She was a very beautiful woman, but it went way beyond that.

It was just something about her openness,

and what she in collaboration with Bergman

brought to the whole transaction with an audience.

It was like a group, a group of two people

that knew each other, and a lot of things we knew about each other

we didn't even talk about because we knew it,

we recognized each other.

When you left Fårö eventually, what brought that on?

A lot was beautiful, we would lie in bed and look over,

and Russia was close, and we wondered,

we are very close to Russia, and we would make stories.

We were very childish.

But we were different too, because he loved it.

The stones and the barren earth,

and the trees that were like this,

and I missed my friends, but he didn't want visitors.

We had three months to think about it,

and I hate departures.

But Ingmar understands departures

because that's part of who he is.

And I got a letter saying maybe this is the best way for us,

and it wasn't a goodbye, it was something

that was so right for me too.

"I found respect when I became independent.

Ceased to cling, ceased to rely so desperately on others

for my own happiness.

Sorrow turned, if you like, into joy.

I no longer believe in a constant state of happiness.

I think it is good to recognize what the moment is about

and accept it as a gift.

I gave birth to a child for the first time.

This boundless event I shall never have again,

but it enhances everything I will later feel.

Gifts are not happiness only,

I think I accept that.

I believe this is my most important change."

-It's the police. -This isn't...

It was new. I'd left Ingmar

and was doing an American movie in France.

Cold Sweat was with Charles Bronson and James Mason.

I'm getting out of Norway to do films in France and...

And the first scene we did somebody had shot him,

and I was the wife of Charles Bronson,

and I come in and he's lying there in a pool of blood.

During rehearsals I go on my knees

and I dry away the blood with a piece of cloth

and then we stop because the rehearsal is over.

And now it's a take and I have a cloth and start doing that.

Charles Bronson stops the take.

"Are you drying my face with that cloth that has been on the floor?"

I don't know why he did it,

maybe he thought I was stuck up or something.

It wasn't jealousy because I couldn't turn into Charles Bronson,

and he could not turn into me. I don't know what it was.

And I've thought about it later, maybe he was shy

and wondered, and thought I came from these intellectual films,

and here I'm doing my first murder film.

I was very surprised when I was asked to do Kristina

in "The Emigrants", because it's such a national book in Sweden,

and I'm Norwegian.

It is what I'm seeing even more now today,

the story of the refugees.

You are in one country which you love,

your beloved family is there

and you still have to leave

because the earth is not giving you the food you need.

For me it was a change because it took a full year to make that movie.

It might be my favorite movie

because it's such a love story between him and her.

It's everything that I wanted when I was young,

to have one man and many children,

and I got to live that life.

Live from the 45th annual academy awards presentation,

Liv Ullmann, a nominee for "The Emigrants".

I was nominated for an Oscar, and I felt wonderful,

and my mother was with me, and my sister,

and it was incredible, and everybody said...

This was Hollywood.

"You're going to win the Oscar, you're so sweet and charming."

And I believed every word. I'm really sweet and charming.

And my sewing circle was with my, my best friends,

they were with me and stayed in a hotel.

There was a party you know just before we went into the auditorium,

and again everybody said:

"You will win it, you're so lovely, incredibly lovely."

Liza Minelli.

I didn't win. It was sad,

but it wasn't like when I was young

and tried to get into theatre school and didn't make it.

There are winners and loser. It didn't change very much.

Can I ask you about your time going to seventies Hollywood

doing more light-hearted films, doing something a bit different.

I got many film offers where maybe I wasn't really a good fit.

A musical, "Lost Horizon".

I couldn't sing or dance. "You're so lovely, you do that."

In "40 Carats" I played a 40-year-old woman from New York,

and I was like 35 and from Norway with this accent.

You spend one wonderful night in Greece...

It became a comedy, but maybe a different kind of comedy.

I did four movies and maybe closed down a studio,

but you know, even Greta Garbo didn't do that.

Time Magazine called her Hollywood's new Nordic star.

Producers stood in line to sign her up.

Everybody wanted a part in creating a new Greta Garbo

or Ingrid Bergman.

But Hollywood wasn't sure how they would do it.

"You must cut your hair, said one producer.

No. I'll make you the biggest star

if you dress a little differently.

I'm used to dressing this way.

Perhaps you should wear some more makeup?

Send the beauty parlor bill to me.

Certainly not.

And then they left me alone,

after all I enjoyed the status of a serious actor.

I had soul and depth and was European.

I didn't use makeup. I came from Norway."

It was only men, and it was the most famous actors in the world.

"A Bridge Too Far",

starring Dirk Bogarde, James Caan,

Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Gene Hackman.

I was the only woman.

It was with Lawrence Olivier, of course I said yes.

Liv Ullmann.

Take cover!

My part wasn't the biggest part in the world,

but I was with Lawrence Olivier, and I was very nervous

and I forgot my lines. I never forget my lines, and he said:

"I do that too when I'm nervous, I forget my lines."

And I was walking there, and it was an important movie,

a wonderful director, and James Bond,

and we were friends and... All of them, it was incredible.

She had a great sense of humor about her own status as a film star,

she never thought of herself that way.

She was always kind of surprised that people treated her that way.

Rock Hudson, when my sewing circle came over to Hollywood,

he took them to Disneyland and everywhere,

and he was wonderful. And yes, a very famous actor

did ask me to come and visit him,

but Rock Hudson told me not to go.

Many people want to welcome me to LA.

I still go, because what does Rock Hudson know?

I go to this famous actor, and there's no one there.

What's going on? Someone rings the doorbell.

Outside is Rock Hudson.

"I knew you would go, come with me."

He knew I was naive and would do anything.

So he had to go and get me.

"As I sat in his chair, the makeup artist and I gossiped.

He gave me good advice for my new life

and was always around

as if he wanted to make sure that I didn't get into difficulties.

Sparkle, he whispered to me as I went into the lights

and the heat and the cameras.

That's what Shirley Temple's mother always said to her daughter.

I spent some months in Hollywood and tried to sparkle.

When something inside me protested,

I reminded myself I would soon be home again."

I was successful, but I didn't really know

how successful in a way I was

because I was going from one area of my life

to another area of my life.

I live in Hollywood and I have a beautiful house

and swimming pool, and Linn learns to swim there,

my daughter.

At the same time I go to Sweden to do "Scenes from a Marriage"

with Ingmar,

and there we are staying in very poor cottages,

and have outdoor toilets, and I meet with Erland Josephson

who I played with each morning at four.

It's that reality. I think god was kind of good to me

so it didn't go to my head.

Even if you're not coming back you can say that you will.

I have to go now, Marianne!

I think probably the one that crystallized her incredible gift,

and her profound generosity as a performer,

was "Scenes from a Marriage", because it...

Erland Josephson and her, the way they worked together

was like they were one organism.

I have been much too accommodating of you in our marriage.

I think that killed our love.

He knew that the way it was filmed, in the corner of a set,

it was so bare.

And the way they went through, often in one shot

with very little coverage, you would transport it into

a relationship that you felt lost on a foreign island

with these people, yet in a place that felt familiar.

I think it was an acting masterclass,

and I watched it when I was at drama school,

and it really changed what I thought was even possible

in terms of veracity and truth in performance on screen.

Johan, if you're honest... Look at me!

Look at me, Johan!

You have changed your mind. You don't want a divorce.

You've told me that today, right. Answer me truthfully.

Would it be a crime If I had those thoughts?

I feel defeated. Is that what you want to hear?

There's so many layers to it, and you think how could she,

at that young age, understand the ancient wisdom,

and the regret and the longing, that they would...

one feels when one is in one's 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's.

That's why I keep thinking about her as this ancient creature.

but with a kind of a lightness of spirit.

And I think what keeps her profoundly light

is her incredible sense of humor obviously,

but her profound interest in other people.

I was doing, on Broadway, "Anna Christie."

Greta Garbo had done "Anna Christie" too.

And I enjoyed great success in "Anna Christie",

and we talked so much about Greta Garbo,

and suddenly there on Fifth Avenue

comes Greta Garbo. And she is a legend.

There are not many people that are legends, but she was one.

And I though she'd like to know there is somebody

who's doing her play and you know we'd have a lot in common.

"She's going to be so happy to meet me."

I start walking a little quickly towards her.

And she turns and sees me, and she looks scared.

She didn't look at me and stop, she started to go much faster.

Maybe she didn't see me, so I started walking faster after her.

And then she starts running, and I start running too

because when she hears what I have to say she'll be so happy.

And she ran and ran, and turned her head and she was so scared.

We got to Central Park, and she ran into Central Park.

And suddenly I realize she lives in isolation,

having chosen this for whatever reason,

and that she's this incredibly lonely lady.

And then I suddenly felt lucky,

because I can go back to Norway

and eat waffles with cheese on

and see my friends and so on.

I probably won't be a legend, but I have togetherness.

Women's liberation was starting to get really strong,

and all the very famous women liberation people,

they wanted to see "A Doll's House"

because the author talks about women's liberation

who leaves the husband and children

and goes out in the world as a strong solider for women.

You're turning your back on your sacred duties.

And what in your opinion are my sacred duties?

You don't have to ask me that. Your duties as a wife and mother.

I have other duties just as sacred.

No, you haven't! What for example?

My duties to myself.

Before anything else, you are a wife and a mother.

I don't believe that anymore.

I believe that before anything else, I am a human being.

Just the same as you are Thorvald,

or at least that's what I'm going to turn myself into.

I loved doing Nora.

And it even made me see that I had to change,

because I wanted everybody to be happy with me.

So instead of always saying this is what I feel

I said quite often: "What you would want me to say,

what would make you happy?"

And this is what Nora does all the time.

The way I am now I'm not a wife for you Thorvald.

I'm strong enough to change.

Maybe if the doll is taken away from you.

To be separated from you Nora, I can't conceive of it.

The more reason for it to happen.

"There is a young girl in me who refuses to die.

No happiness hushes her.

All the time she's trying to change herself.

I know that there's so much more than the things I have been near.

I would like to be on my way towards this.

To find peace so that I can sit and listen to what is inside me,

without influence."

Often people, who don't know her work as a director or as a writer,

or haven't met Liv as a person,

can think about her as being Bergman's muse.

But she is a force of nature on to herself.

An artist is a citizen with a megaphone.

If anybody was given an opportunity

and had seen something that needed to be attended to,

they'd be crazy not to use the megaphone.

Subtitles: Jakob Jensen plint.com