Ingrid Lilian Thulin was born in Sollefteå, Sweden on 27 January 1926. At age 17 she moved to Stockholm where she entered the Påhlmans Commercial Institute and began work as an office clerk. However, having a great desire to become an actor, she began drama studies with Gösta Terserus and Willy Koblanck and dance with Lalla Cassel. She joined the Norrköping-Linköping Municipal Theatre in 1947, where she gained notice playing a society girl in Kurt Weill’s One Touch of Venus. Barely a year later, she joined the Royal Dramatic Theatre’s acting school. After graduating in 1950, she made her stage breakthrough in Jean Anouilh’s L’invitation au château (1951). In 1950 she studied mime with Étienne Decroux in Paris. She was with the Malmö Municipal Theatre from 1956-60, working with Ingmar Bergman, and then became an international film star through her roles in Bergman’s Smultronstället / Wild Strawberries (1957) and Nära livet / Brink of Life (1958). She was with the Stockholm Municipal… read more
Ingrid Lilian Thulin was born in Sollefteå, Sweden on 27 January 1926. At age 17 she moved to Stockholm where she entered the Påhlmans Commercial Institute and began work as an office clerk. However, having a great desire to become an actor, she began drama studies with Gösta Terserus and Willy Koblanck and dance with Lalla Cassel. She joined the Norrköping-Linköping Municipal Theatre in 1947, where she gained notice playing a society girl in Kurt Weill’s One Touch of Venus. Barely a year later, she joined the Royal Dramatic Theatre’s acting school. After graduating in 1950, she made her stage breakthrough in Jean Anouilh’s L’invitation au château (1951). In 1950 she studied mime with Étienne Decroux in Paris. She was with the Malmö Municipal Theatre from 1956-60, working with Ingmar Bergman, and then became an international film star through her roles in Bergman’s Smultronstället / Wild Strawberries (1957) and Nära livet / Brink of Life (1958). She was with the Stockholm Municipal Theatre from 1960-62 and then left Sweden, more or less permanently, in 1963. She moved to Italy, where she continued to act in television, theatre and films, such as Luchino Visconti’s La Caduta degli dei / The Damned (1969). She also taught at the film school in Rome and in theatre school. In 1965 she directed her first film, the short Hängivelsen, and in 1982 made the semi-autobigraphical Brusten himmel / Broken Sky.
At the beginning of her film career, she was often typecast in roles as a young Swedish beauty. Even in her breakthrough around 1950, her blonde and blue-eyed image seemed very Swedish. Thulin later said that Bergman made did her “ugly” and cast her in more complicated and neurotic parts that were more difficult and more psychologically suited to her, such as the role of the dry intellectual in Tystnaden / The Silence (1963) or the stigmatized school teacher in Nattvardsgästerna / Winter Light (1963). In the general public she represents the quintessential Nordic woman: beautiful, intelligent and sexually liberated, a combination of cool blonde beauty and Nordic sensuality. She is also often touched by her Norrland heritage, which perhaps plays into the freedom, strength and emotional restraint in her performances. This is true of many of her films roles—not only with Bergman, but also in such films as Badarna (1968), as well as foreign roles in which she played cool, slightly evil and psychologically complicated women, such as the businesswoman in Il Giorno prima / Control (1987). She published her autobiography, Någon jag kände, in 1992.
Ingrid Thulin died of cancer on January 7, 2004 in Stockholm. —http://www.ingridthulin.com/biography.htm
