Harriet Andersson

Harriet Andersson
Harriet Andersson in 2014.
Born	(1932-02-14) 14 February 1932 (age 85) , Sweden
Nationality	Swedish
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1949–2007
Spouse(s)	Bertil Wejfeldt (m. 1959–64) Bobo Håkansson (m. 1980–82)
Partner(s)	Per Oscarsson (1951–1953) Ingmar Bergman (1953–1955) Gunnar Hellström (1956–1958) Jörn Donner (1960s) Börje Åberg (1970s) Ulf Törnberg (1970s)
Children	1

Harriet Andersson (born 14 February 1932) is a Swedish actress, best known outside Sweden for being part of director Ingmar Bergman's stock company. She often played impulsive working class characters and quickly established a reputation on screen for her youthful, unpretentious, full-lipped sensuality. She disdains the use of makeup.

Harriet Andersson began her acting career as a 15-year-old student at Calle Flygare stage school. She joined director Ingmar Bergman for several stage productions at Malmö stadsteater 1953-56.

In a 2008 interview with Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle, Andersson debunks a rumor that she was discovered by Bergman while working as an elevator operator: "In an elevator! Ha, that's a new one for me. No. I did operate an elevator, but that was when I was 14 1/2! Ingmar did not discover me. I was discovered in 1949 in theater school. Before "Monika," I had many small parts. Most of them were a little like Monika. I looked that way. I looked like a bad girl. But I wasn't a bad girl, really. I was a very nice little girl, until I found out what life was.

Bergman wrote the title role in Summer with Monika (1953), specifically for Andersson. The film featured Andersson in a nude scene, one of the first in postwar European cinema. It was inspired by Hedy Lamarr's once notorious skinny-dipping scene in Ecstasy, twenty years earlier. Filmed in Sweden, the motion picture features a musical score by Les Baxter.

Although the romantic relationship with Bergman was brief, they continued to work together. Andersson appeared in several of his best known films, including Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), Through a Glass Darkly (1961), Cries and Whispers (1972), and Fanny and Alexander (1982).

In Through A Glass Darkly, in which Andersson appeared with Max von Sydow and Gunnar Björnstrand, she portrays a latent schizophrenic. The movie title is taken from a verse in First Corinthians (13:12) where Paul of Tarsus says, "For now we see through a glass darkly: But then face to face; Now I know in part; But then I shall know even as I am also known". The plot deals with the actions of four persons during a twenty-four-hour period in an old house a far distance out on the Swedish Archipelago. Some audiences were shocked by Andersson's vivid portrayal of the presence of God as represented in the dark world of a schizophrenic.