Pernilla August

Pernilla August
Pernilla August at the Guldbagge Award (2013)
Born	Mia Pernilla Hertzman-Ericson (1958-02-13) 13 February 1958 (age 59)
Occupation	Actress, film director
Years active	1975–present
Spouse(s)	Klas Östergren (m. 1982; div. 1989) Bille August (m. 1991; div. 1997)
Children	3

Pernilla August (born Mia Pernilla Hertzman-Ericson; 13 February 1958) is a Swedish actress, director and screenwriter. Being one of Sweden's leading actresses and a longtime collaborator with director Ingmar Bergman, she won the Best Actress Award at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival for her role in his The Best Intentions. She is best known for portraying Shmi Skywalker in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace and Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones.

August started acting during her childhood in theatre and at school. Her professional acting career started in 1975 when director Roy Andersson cast her in a minor role in the film Giliap the same year, followed from 1979 by films by other directors, Vilgot Sjöman (among them, the film about Alfred Nobel, 1983) and Lasse Hallström. She studied acting at Swedish National Academy of Mime and Acting in 1979–82. Before finishing her studies, she attracted the attention of Ingmar Bergman, who cast her in his film Fanny and Alexander (1982), playing the nanny in the director's romanticised portrait of his childhood. That marked the beginning of two decades of collaboration, collecting several international awards, including television series The Best Intentions (1991), where she portrayed Bergman's mother and met her second husband to be, director Bille August, and TV-productions Private Confessions (1996), directed by Liv Ullmann and Bergman's own In the Presence of a Clown (1997).