Max von Sydow passed away on Sunday at the age of 90, his wife Catherine Brelet confirmed. The Swedish-born star, who was actually born Carl Adolf von Sydow, died in France, having become a citizen of the European country in 2002.
“It is with a broken heart and with infinite sadness that we have the extreme pain of announcing the departure of Max von Sydow on 8 March 2020,” she said, reports The Guardian.
Max landed his first role in the 1957 movie The Seventh Seal in which he plays a game of chess with the Grim Reaper. He then went on to play Jesus Christ in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) and evil Emperor Ming in 1980 cult classic Flash Gordon.
However it was arguably his performance as Father Merrin in 1973’s The Exorcist which catapulted him onto the international stage and earned him a place in the history books of Hollywood.
He then went on to star in the likes of Hannah and Her Sisters, directed by Woody Allen, Marcello Herrighe in Footloose and famously portrayed Bond villain Ernst Blofeld in 1983’s Never Say Never Again.
Tributes flooded in for von Sydow from fans and colleagues online, with director Martin Scorsese describing him as “something like a consummate actor”.
“I had the chance to work with him only once and I cherished every minute of it. On the set he was remarkable, and off the set he a complete gentleman,” he told The Guardian. “What he and Ingmar Bergman found together is more precious than gold. Tonight I’ll watch one of those pictures—maybe Shame, or Hour of the Wolf, or Winter Light, or The Seventh Seal—and find myself shocked, surprised and awed all over again.”
More recently he earned praise for his role as the Three-Eyed Raven in HBO’s hugely popular series Game of Thrones, and von Sydow also played Lor San Tekka in 2015 movie Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens.
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