--- title: In Every Role, Max von Sydow Brought Greatness, Humanity and Spirit description: If you’ve seen any of those “lesser” performances by Von Sydow, who died on March 8 at age 90, you’ve still seen greatness in action. canonical: https://time.com/5799750/max-von-sydow-obit/ author: Stephanie Zacharek article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2020-03-09T22:17:46.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T08:25:03.215Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: For More Than 60 Years, in Roles Great and Small, Actor Max von Sydow Brought Greatness, Humanity and Spirit og:description: Even if you’ve never seen an Ingmar Bergman movie, you know Max von Sydow og:url: https://time.com/5799750/max-von-sydow-obit/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt262163aa09337c4c/698a0b56b21a9ca58f50344e/GettyImages-543754450.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: On the set of Le Scaphandre et le Papillon og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: For More Than 60 Years, in Roles Great and Small, Actor Max von Sydow Brought Greatness, Humanity and Spirit twitter:description: Even if you’ve never seen an Ingmar Bergman movie, you know Max von Sydow twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt262163aa09337c4c/698a0b56b21a9ca58f50344e/GettyImages-543754450.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # For More Than 60 Years, in Roles Great and Small, Actor Max von Sydow Brought Greatness, Humanity and Spirit > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account.  by [Stephanie Zacharek](https://time.com/author/stephanie-zacharek/)  ## Stephanie Zacharek Film Critic Mar 9, 2020 10:17 PM UTC  Swedish actor Max von Sydow on the set of the film "Le Scaphandre et le Papillon" (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), directed by American artist, painter and director Julian Schnabel and based on the Jean-Dominique Bauby novel by the same title. Swedish actor Max von Sydow on the set of the film "Le Scaphandre et le Papillon" (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), directed by American artist, painter and director Julian Schnabel and based on the Jean-Dominique Bauby novel by the same title.Etienne George—Sygma via Getty Images  by [Stephanie Zacharek](https://time.com/author/stephanie-zacharek/)  ## Stephanie Zacharek Film Critic Mar 9, 2020 10:17 PM UTC Even if you’ve never seen an Ingmar Bergman movie, you know Max von Sydow. That’s because, in addition to being one of the greatest actors of both the last century and the early years of this one, he simply _worked_—a lot. Though he was the first Swedish actor to become an international movie star, he sustained a career of more than 60 years by taking character roles, and never gave less than his all. He played the devilishly cartoony villain Emperor Ming in 1980’s _Flash Gordon._ If Sir Alec Guinness gave the early _Star Wars_\-franchise movies a touch of class, von Sydow stepped in later to do his part, as elderly explorer dude Lor San Tecca in 2015’s _Star Wars: Episode VII—The Force Awakens._ _Game of Thrones_ fans know him as the Three-Eyed Raven. He even showed up as an absurdly dignified dignitary in a 2007 Jackie Chan-Chris Tucker movie, _Rush Hour 3._ If you’ve seen any of those ostensibly “lesser” performances by Von Sydow, who died on March 8 at age 90, you’ve still seen greatness in action. There are actors who won’t take a part they feel is beneath them; von Sydow took roles that might have looked puny on the page and he elevated them to his standards. Beginning with the movies he made with Ingmar Bergman—their first was the stark allegorical chiller _The Seventh Seal,_ in 1957—he showed a range and depth that few other actors of his generation achieved. And most important of all, his work—in Bergman’s films in particular—is a reminder of the way actors, at their best, can drive home the complexity of the human spirit. In a world of reductive thinking and knee-jerk responses, a von Sydow performance always demands that you slow down and _see._ In _The Seventh Seal,_ von Sydow’s Antonius Block—a knight returning from the Crusades to find his country decimated by plague—is a strapping specimen of manhood coming face-to-face, literally, with his mortality. His virility is all there in his very being: It’s as if the spirit of masculine confidence has been poured into the contours of his face. His stride is mighty, like the trees of the forest mysteriously come to life. But even this character, a man built for conquering, rises to his duty as a human being. Von Sydow was, like Laurence Olivier, a great physical actor; you always got a sense of the soul within the body. Von Sydow was nominated twice for an Academy Award, first for his lead role in _Pelle the Conquerer_ (1987), and later for his supporting performance in _Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close_ (2011). He was a bold, magnificent actor, even in his later years, and yet within that context his subtlety was extraordinary. In _The Diving Bell_ _and the Butterfly_ (2007), he plays the frail—yet still performatively macho—elderly father of a man who has been rendered almost completely paralyzed by a stroke (Mathieu Amalric). He’s unable to fully reckon with his son’s condition, even as he, roughly around 90, soldiers on. His composure disintegrates during a phone conversation, as he tries to wish his son a happy birthday. The moment is so naked, so unguarded, that you almost want to look away. Our most robust actors are often the ones who best convey the fragility of life. And even when von Sydow glowered, as many of his roles required him to do, the expansiveness of his spirit always showed through. His face, so stalwart and trustworthy, could bring us nose-to-nose with truths we’d rather not face. In Bergman’s great _Shame_ (1968), von Sydow plays a husband (to the luminous Liv Ullman) who’s childish, selfish and ultimately cruel. And yet you feel for him. Great movies, along with great books, are our best training ground for learning how to hold several ideas in our heads at once. And in films, actors are the people best positioned to help us see facets of ourselves, sometimes even those we’re uncomfortable with. You could look at every von Sydow performance and compose from them a sort of symphony. It would be the sound of who we are at our best, at our worst and everything in between. He was fearless, and he was also, often, fun. There are no small roles, as long as the legacy of von Sydow survives. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5799750/max-von-sydow-obit/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5799750/max-von-sydow-obit/"},"headline":"For More Than 60 Years, in Roles Great and Small, Actor Max von Sydow Brought Greatness, Humanity and Spirit","datePublished":"2020-03-09T22:17:46.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-24T08:25:03.215Z","description":"Even if you’ve never seen an Ingmar Bergman movie, you know Max von Sydow","url":"https://time.com/5799750/max-von-sydow-obit/","keywords":["movies","remembrance","obit"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt262163aa09337c4c/698a0b56b21a9ca58f50344e/GettyImages-543754450.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Stephanie Zacharek","jobTitle":"Film Critic","url":"https://time.com/author/stephanie-zacharek/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt262163aa09337c4c/698a0b56b21a9ca58f50344e/GettyImages-543754450.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"On the set of Le Scaphandre et le Papillon","caption":"On the set of Le Scaphandre et le Papillon","creditText":"Etienne George—Sygma via Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/movies/","name":"movies"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5799750/max-von-sydow-obit/","name":"For More Than 60 Years, in Roles Great and Small, Actor Max von Sydow Brought Greatness, Humanity and Spirit"}}]}] ```