Original subtitles

...ladies and gentlemen, it's Liv Ullmann.

One of the problems of success is that it brings fame

and a sort of larger-than-life quality,

because it ends up there on the big screen.

And so a lot of fuss is made of actors.

Liv has an incredible authority

because she's had a lifetime's work

of bearing her soul to people.

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.

More than 2.000 Viet Cong-guerrillas were reported killed

in a major operation only three months ago. The fighting today is...

I knew about it and I was on the side of those who protested,

but I wasn't active. I had so much to do,

and I felt I'm doing what is important in life.

I had forgotten a lot of what I'd learnt when I was a child

and I saw Vittorio De Sica's movies

that we are not alone in this world.

Live from the 45th Annual Academy Awards presentation.

Liv Ullmann, a nominee for the "Emigrants".

I was nominated for an Oscar and pretty famous in the United States.

There was a big party, and they called me and said:

"Would you go with Kissinger? He says he wants to go with you."

I was the big thing in Hollywood then,

and he was the Foreign Minister of Nixon.

I even got a telegram from the Prime Minister in Sweden saying:

"We know you're going to meet Kissinger.

Say I didn't mean what it said in the paper about Kissinger",

I don't even know what.

It was so fun because he stopped being whatever he was with Nixon

and I stopped being the very famous film star

and we started to talk.

He told me about his father who had a scrapbook with his pictures

and was so proud of him.

I told him my mother, just went home, she was here for my Oscar.

It was so lovely.

I was invited to the White House,

and Brezhnev was there. And Brezhnev said:

"I love all your films", which wasn't true.

I don't think he'd seen any. What an experience I'm having.

Liv is incredibly naive.

At same time she's extremely perceptive.

And even though she doesn't understand politics,

she understands human beings very well.

He couldn't stand my politics

because they were very different from his politics.

She sometimes has unfeasible ideas

of what should be done. But that isn't interesting,

I run into a lot of people who have feasible and unfeasible ideas.

She has a clear perception of what the nature of the problem is,

and there she's not naive and I can learn from her

because she has a range of human sensitivities

that eludes me very often.

I knew I could ask him things,

political things that I needed to know.

And once when I was asked to go on the

Freedom March for International Rescue Committee,

my agent said maybe I shouldn't, maybe they were CIA.

I said: "I think I will call Kissinger and find out."

I called and apparently my number always went through. He answered.

And he was with Mao in China. He was with Mao!

Hello, and he was laughing, and he pranked,

because he could be like a normal person with me.

He pranked. "I'm with Mao and looking at his pictures".

And I said: "I'm just calling to find out

if International Rescue Committee is with CIA."

He laughed and said:

"Only you are stupid enough to ask me

Nixon's Foreign Minister, if they are CIA."

First of all that was like giving me a decoration.

Because if it had been a CIA-fronted organization,

I would have been just about the worst person to ask.

On the other hand, I was the right person to ask.

If it had been,

I'd found a way to tell her not to do it.

He said I'm completely naive, but of course for him I'm naive

because I don't agree on anything that he talks about,

except that he's also human.

I was on Broadway, "Anna Christie",

and I had a great success.

It was a great play and a terrific production,

but our great kind of secret weapon

was everybody's adoration for Liv.

She brought with her on stage a tremendous sense of excitement,

and then she played against it.

She was crafty that way.

She had a wonderful sense of humor,

this huge laugh that...

You don't hear her roar with laughter much in any of her roles.

Jimmy Carter had only been president for a few months.

There were sniffer dogs, there were secret service men

scouring the backstage.

Everybody was breathless with excitement.

Halfway through act two I have a scene with Anna's father,

where I'm persuading him that I should marry Anna.

And I had this line:

"Can you imagine a fine girl the likes of Anna laying down at night

with a muddy scut stinking of pigs and dung?"

Jimmy Carter was famously a peanut farmer,

and a little devil crept into my brain, and I said:

"Yes, a fine sight surely.

Can you imagine a fine girl like Anna laying down at night

with a muddy scut stinking of pigs and peanuts and dung."

Everybody looked at Carter, and Carter must have made a little move,

and then the audience absolutely exploded.

And they went on and on and on,

and on stage of course we got to meet the President.

And Jimmy Carter came up to me and said:

"I read the play and don't remember

any mention of peanuts."

I do believe that Liv Ullmann's devilest nature

had gotten into my mind at that moment.

I wouldn't have done that if I wasn't acting opposite Liv.

And then I wrote "Choices", my second book.

"In English first, not Norwegian.

Linn and I still lived in the United States.

I was simply an immigrant from Norway.

Am I a human being only through my work?

Is there something I give in acting

that I'm unable to possess as a private person?

Allowing others through me to recognize

what they have known before.

Is that Liv leading her human life?

Too often recently I find what I'm doing in the theatre

or in a film studio a cheat.

It has become an effort just to move my feet

from one side of the stage to the other.

Lawrence Olivier told me he had a similar feeling when saying lines.

It became a strain

and he started to dread not remembering the next line

while still saying the line before.

Maybe it is a midlife question, maybe it has no name,

maybe it is simply awareness of choice."

I was doing a musical on Broadway, "I Remember Mama".

Give it all your thought Give a little bit...

There were a lot of great plays on Broadway at that time.

We were asked to collect money from the audience because Pol Pot

was in Cambodia and doing great horrors to the people there,

killing and murdering them.

Nobody crossed the border, but a march would go there,

and they needed money for 50 truck loads of medicine and doctors.

Fantastic.

We all collected money, and I was to give it to the head of IRC,

one of my mentors later in life.

His name was Leo Cherne. I'd never heard of him before.

I was the Broadway person who gave it to him.

He was an old man and I said:

"This is for you and it's going to be a wonderful march

and congratulations."

And then I said, because my mother taught me that,

good girl... "Is there something more I can do?"

He's standing there with a Broadway star.

He just looked at me, Leo Cherne, and said:

"Yes, why don't you come with us?"

I asked him if it was going to be a long trip.

"Yes.

For the rest of your life."

We tried to get into Cambodia, and they started to shoot at us

when we came close to the border of Cambodia.

We had to stop, and Bayard Rustin,

who walked next to Martin Luther King,

went even closer to the border, and sang

"We Shall Overcome" and it was fantastic.

And then we gave all this to

refugee camps outside of Cambodia.

And we continued to travel.

It's a march for freedom.

For once in my life I'm not talking about theatre

or film or Ingmar or anybody, for once in my life

I felt this is where I should be,

and this is where I still am.

A new teacher came into my life, the head of Unicef, Jim Grant.

He said: "We would really like you to be an ambassador for Unicef,

and we've never had a woman ambassador for Unicef."

I looked at misery in the world sometimes as statistics,

or outside of my borders.

Not because I'm a bad person,

just because my life was filled with so much happiness

and excitement and whatever.

This is really what Liv is supposed to do,

to meet these people who have nothing,

and they are statistics, and this is my opportunity.

People are listening to me. They didn't always listen to me,

but now they were listening to me because I got stories.

With Unicef I think I visited forty different countries,

and incredible things happened.

The incredible things that happened were beautiful, generous,

wonderful people who had no choice in life.

And children who were incredible children,

but had no future in life.

And children were dying by the thousands and thousands every day.

"I see her standing lost in agony with a tiny baby in her arms.

The area of her camp is severely affected by drought.

Her child is dying quietly of thirst.

In front of her a waterhole with thick polluted water.

She has a choice. To let her only baby die from dehydration

or to let him drink the poisoned water.

I watch her make the choice.

She bends, her hand is cupped

and filled with mud.

She lifts it slowly to her baby's mouth."

An artist is a citizen with a megaphone.

I don't think it's that an artist has a special obligation,

I think it's that everybody has an obligation.

So, if anybody was given an opportunity

and had a megaphone, and had seen something

that needed to be attended to,

they'd be crazy not to use the megaphone.

When you have seen suffering

or hideous injustice firsthand,

then you can't unsee that, you can't unsay it.

And therefore you have the responsibility,

in whatever way you can,

to try and bring that to public attention.

We're given so much as successful actors.

It's only right that we try to give back something.

And to lend one's voice to the voiceless

is a very easy thing to do and can be quite powerful.

This isn't a sort of a do gooder-attitude,

it's just that one is surrounded by life,

and you see that sometimes people could do with help,

which is very easy for you to give.

I have brought, it's only four lines.

It's only four lines.

It's not something I said, but it's something that I read.

It's almost my favorite writer, Leo Tolstoy.

And he wrote this:

"I sit on a man's back,

choking him and making him carry me.

And yet assure myself and others

that I am sorry for him and wish to lighten his load

by all possible means,

except getting off his back."

I don't think it can be said better, and...

It goes for all of us, it goes for all of us every day.

One of the problems of success is that it brings fame,

fame for doing what you do and what you have done.

And a sort of larger-than-life-quality

because it ends up there on the screen, that big.

A lot of fuzz is made of actors.

Liv and I, I think, are alike in that life is what we're here for.

And although I love acting while I'm doing it, I think as a person

I share with Liv a very focused ability

just to concentrate on what one is doing,

whether you're directing or acting,

that is all there is in life.

But as soon as that's done, you get back to life,

not to living as a well-known person,

as a famous film star, but back to real life.

What did you say?

You look fabulous.

-I didn't understand. -You look fabulous.

-I look fabulous? -Yes.

There's a power about you because of your beauty.

-Are you a psychic? -I'm not psychic.

I just call it the way I see it.

-You're a handsome woman. -At my age?

Love those eyes.

They're filming you. Do you mind?

I have nothing to hide. I did my ten years in jail.

-I'm clean now. -Are you clean?

I'm clean now.

-Did my time, ten years. -Thank you for talking to me.

-It's that face. -I was lonely.

I'm a lonely man myself, I'm 60 years old.

How old do think I am?

It's hard to tell because your face is absolutely beautiful.

-Honest. -90.

90? No, not 90. Did you say 90?

No, I didn't! I didn't say 90 at all.

I think you're just another pretty face. That's what I think.

-I love you. -I love you too.

-Have a good day. -You too.

"I want to understand what my choices are, and act upon them.

Because choice is the essence of what I believe it is to be human.

I want to fight the forces that deny an individual

or a people the availability of choice.

And since I understand that nothing is clear cut,

I must try to learn to accept the ambiguity as well.

That life's most difficult moments are unclear.

That mankind's most profound aspirations

have costs as well as benefits."

Before I met Liv, I was living in a home

for disabled children called Freetown Cheshire Home

in Sierra Leone.

I was one of the few kids whose parents

literally left them there and never ever visited them again.

I was like four years old, my parents dropped me at the home,

and I never saw them ever again.

We were in a in an orphanage for disabled people

that had trouble with walking or other issues.

And I met somebody called John, and he was you know,

sitting there on the floor, and he had a guitar

and that was his thing. And he was...

He was lonely. And I...

I somehow recognized that loneliness. He didn't tell me,

but I learned later that nobody came and visited him.

But I knew he was lonely.

I identified with him because I'm often lonely myself.

In the home we were always being visited by

these religious groups

telling us about the afterlife and angels.

I was sitting down on a veranda,

and there came this lady. She was all in white.

And she came and sat next to me and started talking to me.

So, if you can imagine, when you put it in that context,

in terms of religious imagery,

it literally was like an angel

coming into your life.

And she just started talking to me.

And I heard myself saying:

"Would you like to leave here?

And are you going to have an education. Maybe I can help you?"

I don't know why I said it because I was kind of young myself.

It was my one in a billion chance.

I'm an orphan. I have no one,

but I had this dream of studying technology in the UK.

I had a booklet from this college.

The whole idea of actually getting into this college

was like bordering on the ridiculous.

No way it was ever going to happen.

But anyway there Liv was, and she asked me,

and I just told her this is what I want to,

and like they say, the rest is history.

Maybe I just thought he needed a mum?

Maybe I had bad conscience because I was there in Sierra Leone

and there was a revolution there and people were in agony.

I made him go to England,

and he went to school there and was incredibly brilliant.

The first time I realized that she's somebody of celebrity

was when I arrived at Gatwick Airport.

The immigration officer said I was a very lucky young man.

And that's when I knew that maybe Liv was somebody,

because I didn't know her. I'd never heard of her,

and we don't watch you know Bergman movies

where I come from, you know.

She's been by my side since 1987.

My kids call her Grandma Liv

and my daughter is called Liv too.

How many black African kids are called Liv?

But we didn't spent hours looking through baby books. We knew.

It's a girl, she has to be called Liv, so there you have it.

It was just meant to be.

I didn't stretch out my hand to him and helped him

and bla, bla. He just needed a mom.

"The question is not whether we are guilty for their plight?

Although the silent bystander is often as guilty as the offender,

but guilt is a prison for emotions

and stops the process of change and commitment.

The question is what opportunity exists for those of us

who witness misery?

I want to know more, I want to find out what life is to all of us

and how we use it and whether there is joy in having it,

and what we are for, and what friends are for,

and why there are lonely people?

I want to discover the feeling of life as it begins.

I want to discover the feeling of life

as it approaches its end.

I want to discover because we want to be discovered."

First of all, she's my aunt. And she's a warm person

who loves her family. My mother is her only sibling,

so of course they were very close and very connected,

and that made us really very close to her from the beginning.

When I was 23 I came out as a gay man,

or a gay young man at the time.

And she was the first one in my family I told I was gay.

I remember that drive. We were in her car on the way to the airport.

I was really upset and I cried,

and it took us five minutes and we laughed and laughed.

I have the same name as my father, and she said:

"Imagine when the rumor starts, they will think it's your father."

And then we laughed and laughed.

She was the one that actually

made me realize that,

I don't know why I get so emotional,

but she made me realize I had a future with love and happiness

and people behind me that supported me.

That was crucial and important for a young, insecure guy.

It must have helped

because I became the leader of the gay movement in Norway,

so somehow that gave me a flying start.

When you read Liv's books, it's it's apparently clear

how much compassion and empathy she has for everyone.

And that she fights for everyone.

We are together, there is no difference,

there is no other.

We can't do many things, but we can always be together

and know that what I chose

influences what they are given.

Because without my choice, since they have no choice,

they get nothing.

We women sometimes see things that men don't see in camps

and three of us or four of us went to Hong Kong,

and there was a big refugee camp there,

and there was a lot of talk of what was going on there.

This was while the British were still in charge of Hong Kong.

They didn't want us, didn't want people in there,

but they thought we looked like little innocent women and let us in.

And that's when we saw it, when they had to say hello

to the chief of the staff, the women had to kneel down.

There were all kinds of rules.

If you had your menstruation,

you had to show the old thing before you could get a new thing.

Things that were very humiliating and very bad.

And if you were going to have a baby,

you have to tell them when you are seven months pregnant,

because then they will take you in a car, out of the camp

away from everyone you know to a prison.

You will stay in that prison until you give birth.

That is the ritual for women who are pregnant

and have done nothing wrong except being a refugee.

And while we are there she must have forgotten

and she was probably more than seven months pregnant.

Maybe she was eight months. Then she starts to give birth.

We can see that she is obviously giving birth,

but instead of doctors they're all coming.

And they are tying her legs

to keep them closed.

And then the car comes and gets her,

and it's two hours to the prison.

And of course that child never got a number

because that child never escaped.

And we went to the Senate and to the Congress

in the United States and talked about it.

I have to my right one of the people who has been most impassioned

and has worked hardest throughout her life

to bring to the world's attention the particular struggles

of refugee families.

She's been one of the most active members of

the International Rescue Committee,

and she's an international ambassador for Unicef.

It's my pleasure to introduce Liv Ullmann.

Thank you.

Then I did something that I've never done in my life.

I was one of the founders of a new organization called

"Women for refugee women and children".

And we started it. We were like 4-5 people in the beginning

having this idea, and today it's incredible,

it's all over the world. And I'm not practical,

but I was part of and founded something.

And I feel very proud of that, that's like personal proud,

I'm allowed to do that too. So that's what I did.

Of the more than 18 million refugees in this world,

14 million are women and children.

We founded ourselves because we believe that sometimes

it takes a woman to recognize the need,

the special needs, of another woman.

She has this fascinating thing

that she sees a single person in the whole political story.

Because you can tell political stories in many ways,

but politics is always about human beings,

it's always about human being's lives.

It is about that single woman she has met in a refugee camp,

it is about her nephew who was struggling coming out as gay.

And she sees that person

and the whole picture at the same time.

She manages to combine that. That's why her voice is so strong.

There are millions of silent kids who never make the headlines.

There are voices of children who in their short lives

lack not only food and health care,

but love and touch and dreams and eagerness

and faith and happiness. They lack it all.

"What is a doll?", one little girl asked me

when I wondered if she had one.

Children who will never be able to travel away from their misery

or plead their cause in front of a microphone

because they belong to the weakest

and the most deprived among us, as do their mothers,

refugees.

"During these days my anger grows.

I want to be angry, anger allows action,

the possibilities of change,

the choice to protest.

Why is it that I, like many other women,

have been brought up to deny my right to express anger?

Why is anger considered unfeminine?

Small wonder that so many women fear presenting their beliefs

exactly the way they feel them,

or even frightened by their own feelings of anger.

I am angry.

I am furious watching children suffer

while I know that billions are going to the machinery of war

and designs of destruction.

I am learning that if I just go on accepting

the framework for life that others have given me,

if I fail to make my own choices,

the reason for my life will be missing.

I'll be unable to recognize that which I have the power to change.

I refuse to spend my life

regretting the things I failed to do."

I love the colors of America.

Not just the red, white and blue,

but the red, white, black, brown and yellow.

I love this rainbow that is America.

Except for the Native Americans,

we are all immigrants or descendants of immigrants

or abolitionists.

It's his first day as a president,

and he hoped to be a good president, I'm sure.

The energy that we draw from our diversity

can light up the world.

I had some beautiful words to say,

and while I said those words, that we are all alike

and we belong together, I thought how wonderful

I get to say this.

And the incredible gratefulness, everything that I had been doing

that also allowed me to say these words

that are so important, and that is art.

When you talk to people, and they understand it

and you are part of a whole thing.

And then I was proud that I could do my art.

Not everybody could do that, but I could.

Liv has an incredible authority

because she's had a lifetime's work of bearing her soul

to people and speaking honestly and directly

to cinema audiences.

So there's a trust in Liv's authenticity

and her desire to tell the truth.

When she speaks, people do listen

and trust what she says,

and if anyone is going to encourage empathy in others,

and my word we need empathy and compassion more than ever...

if anyone is going to listen to an empathetic voice

people will listen to Liv's, I think.

Congratulation on the Oscar by the way.

-Thank you. -You should have got it long ago.

You've been my favorite actor all my life so thank you, it's an honor.

I'm trying to be an actress and I just love your films.

-I wish you all the best. -Thank you so much.

There comes a time, I think, when the Academy feels

now who are the great actors who have had great careers,

who have given so much to cinema,

who have never won an Academy Award?

And of course, Liv's name should be there.

And I hope it fires her to do more and more interesting,

great humanitarian and cinematographic work,

because she is a jewel.

Liv has heightened awareness of the plight of refugees

all over the world.

In this cause she has never ceased to follow

the concise rule she has forged for herself:

"Don't turn away."

It's a phrase that could be used with equal accuracy

to describe the profound artistry of Liv Ullmann.

Thank you.

Thank you.

"During our short time on earth, we exercise and follow choices

with all their ambiguities.

We learn that little is clear cut.

A long time ago I played in Brecht's "Caucasian Chalk Circle".

My name was Grusha.

I'm sitting beside a baby whose mother has abandoned it.

I'm very poor and very frightened.

As I bend down to pick up the child

I'm filled with doubts.

The child would be a hindrance in my life.

I barely have food and clothing for myself.

I walk away.

Then I stop.

I return.

Reluctantly I sit down close to the infant again.

I look at it, then look away.

Finally, I pick it up,

rebuke it for the difficulties I will now be faced with,

left with, because it is so pitiful and helpless.

I am the one who passed by and was able to help."

Subtitles: Jakob Jensen plint.com