He became a French citizen in 2002, and lived in France for the last two decades of his life.Ĭapable in roles ranging from stolid, contemplative protagonists to sardonic artists and menacing, often gleeful villains, von Sydow was first noticed internationally for playing the 14th-century knight Antonius Block in Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957), which features iconic scenes of his character challenging Death to a game of chess.
He had a 70-year career in European and American cinema, television, and theatre, appearing in more than 150 films and several television series in multiple languages. Max von Sydow ( / v ɒ n ˈ s iː d oʊ/ Swedish: ( listen) born Carl Adolf von Sydow 10 April 1929 – 8 March 2020) was a Swedish-French actor.
