She won three Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards and the Tony Award

for Best Actress. She is ranked as the fourth greatest female star of American cinema of

all time by the American Film Institute. She is best remembered for her roles as Ilsa Lund

in Casablanca, a World War II drama co-starring Humphrey Bogart, and as Alicia Huberman in

Notorious, an Alfred Hitchcock thriller co-starring Cary Grant.

Before becoming a star in American films, she had been a leading actress in Swedish

films. Her first introduction to U.S. audiences came with her starring role in the English-language

remake of Intermezzo in 1939. In the United States, she brought to the screen a "Nordic

freshness and vitality", along with exceptional beauty and intelligence, and according to

the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, she quickly became "the ideal of American

womanhood" and one of Hollywood's greatest leading actresses.

After her performance in Victor Fleming's remake of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1941,

she was noticed by her future producer David O. Selznick, who called her "the most completely

conscientious actress" he had ever worked with. He started her with a one-film role

at her insistence, then signed a four-film contract rather than the typical seven-year

acting contracts typically signed with foreign actors at that time, thereby supporting her

continued success. A few of her other starring roles, besides Casablanca, included For Whom

the Bell Tolls, Gaslight, The Bells of St. Mary's, Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, Notorious,

and Under Capricorn, and the independent production Joan of Arc.

In 1950, after a decade of stardom in American films, she starred in the Italian film Stromboli,

which led to a love affair with director Roberto Rossellini while they were both already married.

The affair and then marriage with Rossellini created a scandal that forced her to remain

in Europe until 1956, when she made a successful Hollywood return in Anastasia, for which she

won her second Academy Award, as well as the forgiveness of her fans. Many of her personal

and film documents can be seen in the Wesleyan University Cinema Archives.

Early years: 1915–38

Bergman, named after Princess Ingrid of Sweden, was born in Stockholm, on 29 August 1915 to

a Swedish father, Justus Samuel Bergman, and his German wife, Frieda Henrietta "Friedel"

Bergman. When she was three years of age, her mother died. Her father, who was an artist

and photographer, died when she was thirteen. In the years before he died, he wanted her

to become an opera star, and had her take voice lessons for three years. But she always

"knew from the beginning that she wanted to be an actress," sometimes wearing her mother's

clothes and staging plays in her father's empty studio. Her father documented all her

birthdays with a borrowed camera.

After his death, she was sent to live with an aunt, who died of heart disease only six

months later. She then moved in with her Aunt Hulda and Uncle Otto, who had five children.

Another aunt she visited, Elsa Adler, first told Ingrid, when she was 11, that her mother

may have "some Jewish blood," and that her father was aware of that fact long before

they married. But her aunt also cautioned her about telling others about her possible

ancestry as "there might be some difficult times coming."

At 17, in 1932, Bergman was allowed only one chance to become an actress by entering an

acting competition with the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm. Bergman recalls her

feelings during that competition:

As I walked off the stage, I was in mourning, I was at a funeral. My own. It was the death

of my creative self. My heart had truly broken... they didn't think I was even worth listening

to, or watching.

Her impression was wrong, as she later met one of the judges who described how the others

viewed her performance:

We loved your security and your impertinence. We loved you and told each other that there

was no reason to waste time as there were dozens of other entrants still to come. We

didn't need to waste any time with you. We knew you were a natural and great. Your future

as an actress was settled.

As a result she received a scholarship to the state-sponsored Royal Dramatic Theatre

School, where Greta Garbo had years earlier earned a similar scholarship. After several

months she was given a part in a new play, Ett Brott, written by Sigfrid Siwertz. Chandler

notes that this was "totally against procedure" at the school, where girls were expected to

complete three years of study before getting such acting roles.

During her first summer break, she was also hired by a Swedish film studio, which led

to her leaving the Royal Dramatic Theatre after just one year, to work in films full-time.

Her first film role after leaving the Royal Dramatic Theatre was a small part in 1935's

Munkbrogreven. She went on to act in a dozen films in Sweden, including En kvinnas ansikte,

which was later remade as A Woman's Face with Joan Crawford, and one film in Germany, Die

vier Gesellen. Hollywood period: 1939–49

Intermezzo: A Love Story Bergman's first acting role in the United

States came when Hollywood producer David O. Selznick brought her to America to star

in Intermezzo: A Love Story, an English language remake of her 1936 Swedish film, Intermezzo.

Unable to speak English and uncertain about her acceptance by the American audience, she

expected to complete this one film and return home to Sweden. Her husband, Dr. Petter Lindström,

remained in Sweden with their daughter Pia. In the film she played the role of a young

piano accompanist opposite Leslie Howard as a famous violin virtuoso.

She arrived in Los Angeles on 6 May 1939, and stayed at the Selznick home until she

could find another residence. According to Selznick's son, Danny, who was a child at

the time, his father had a few concerns about Ingrid: "She didn't speak English, she was

too tall, her name sounded too German, and her eyebrows were too thick." Bergman was

soon accepted without having to modify her looks or name, despite some early suggestions

by Selznick. "He let her have her way," notes a story in Life Magazine. Selznick understood

her fear of Hollywood make-up artists, who might turn her into someone she wouldn't recognize,

and "instructed them to lay off." He was also aware that her natural good looks would compete

successfully with Hollywood's "synthetic razzle-dazzle." During the weeks following, while Intermezzo

was being filmed, Selznick was also filming Gone with the Wind. In a letter to William

Hebert, his publicity director, Selznick described a few of his early impressions of Bergman:

Miss Bergman is the most completely conscientious actress with whom I have ever worked, in that

she thinks of absolutely nothing but her work before and during the time she is doing a

picture ... She practically never leaves the studio, and even suggested that her dressing

room be equipped so that she could live here during the picture. She never for a minute

suggests quitting at six o'clock or anything of the kind ... Because of having four stars

acting in Gone with the Wind, our star dressing-room suites were all occupied and we had to assign

her a smaller suite. She went into ecstasies over it and said she had never had such a

suite in her life ... All of this is completely unaffected and completely unique and I should

think would make a grand angle of approach to her publicity ... so that her natural

sweetness and consideration and conscientiousness become something of a legend ... and is completely

in keeping with the fresh and pure personality and appearance which caused me to sign her.

Intermezzo became an enormous success and as a result Bergman became a star. The film's

director, Gregory Ratoff, said "She is sensational," as an actress. This was the "sentiment of

the entire set," writes Life, adding that workmen would go out of their way to do things

for her, and the cast and crew "admired the quick, alert concentration she gave to direction

and to her lines." Film historian David Thomson notes that this would become "the start of

an astonishing impact on Hollywood and America" where her lack of makeup contributed to an

"air of nobility." According to Life, the impression that she left on Hollywood, after

she returned to Sweden, was of a tall girl "with light brown hair and blue eyes who was

painfully shy but friendly, with a warm, straight, quick smile." Selznick appreciated her uniqueness,

and with his wife Irene, they remained important friends throughout her career.

Casablanca After the onset of World War II, Bergman "felt

guilty because she had so misjudged the situation in Germany" while she was there filming Die

vier Gesellen. According to one of her biographers, Charlotte Chandler, she had at first considered

the Nazis only a "temporary aberration, 'too foolish to be taken seriously.' She believed

Germany would not start a war." Bergman felt that "The good people there would not permit

it." Chandler adds, "Ingrid felt guilty all the rest of her life because when she was

in Germany at the end of the war, she had been afraid to go with the others to witness

the atrocities of the Nazi extermination camps." After completing one last film in Sweden and

appearing in three moderately successful films in the United States, Bergman co-starred with

Humphrey Bogart in the 1942 classic film Casablanca, which remains her best-known role. In this

film, she played the role of Ilsa, the beautiful Norwegian wife of Victor Laszlo, played by

Paul Henreid, an "anti-Nazi underground hero" who is in Casablanca, a safe-haven from the

Nazis. Bergman did not consider Casablanca to be one of her favorite performances. "I

made so many films which were more important, but the only one people ever want to talk

about is that one with Bogart." In later years she stated, "I feel about Casablanca that

it has a life of its own. There is something mystical about it. It seems to have filled

a need, a need that was there before the film, a need that the film filled."

For Whom the Bell Tolls After Casablanca, with "Selznick's steady

boosting," she played the part of Maria in For Whom the Bell Tolls, which was also her

first color film. For the role she received her first Academy Award nomination for Best

Actress. The film was taken from Ernest Hemingway's novel of the same title. When the book was

sold to Paramount Pictures, Hemingway stated that "Miss Bergman, and no one else should

play the part." His opinion came from seeing her in her first American role, Intermezzo,

although he hadn't yet met her. A few weeks later, they did meet, and after studying her

he said, "You are Maria!" Gaslight

The following year, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Gaslight, a film in which

George Cukor directed her as a "wife driven close to madness" by co-star Charles Boyer.

The film, according to Thomson, "was the peak of her Hollywood glory." Bergman next played

a nun in The Bells of St. Mary's opposite Bing Crosby, for which she received her third

consecutive nomination for Best Actress. Hitchcock films

Bergman starred in the Alfred Hitchcock films Spellbound, Notorious, and Under Capricorn.

Under Capricorn, the only one of the three made in color, was a costume drama which has

never received the acclaim that the other films that Bergman made with Hitchcock. Bergman

was a student of the acting coach Michael Chekhov during the 1940s. Coincidentally,

it was for his role in Spellbound that Chekhov received his only Academy Award nomination.

Joan of Arc Bergman received another Best Actress nomination

for Joan of Arc, an independent film based on the Maxwell Anderson play Joan of Lorraine,

produced by Walter Wanger, and initially released through RKO. Bergman had championed the role

since her arrival in Hollywood, which was one of the reasons she had played it on the

Broadway stage in Anderson's play. The film was not a big hit with the public, partly

because of the scandal of Bergman's affair with Italian film director Roberto Rossellini,

which broke while the film was still in theatres. Even worse, it received disastrous reviews,

and although nominated for several Academy Awards, did not receive a Best Picture nomination.

It was subsequently shorn of 45 minutes. It was not until it was restored to full length

in 1998 and released in 2004 on DVD that later audiences could see it as it was intended

to be shown. Between motion pictures, Bergman had appeared

in the stage plays Liliom, Anna Christie, and Joan of Lorraine. During a press conference

in Washington, D.C. for the promotion of Joan of Lorraine, she protested against racial

segregation after seeing it first hand at the theater she was acting in. This led to

a lot of publicity and some hate mail. Bergman went to Alaska during World War II to entertain

US Army troops. Soon after the war ended, she also went to Europe for the same purpose,

where she was able to see the devastation caused by the war.

Personal life In 1937, at the age of 21, Bergman married

dentist Petter Aron Lindström, and they had a daughter, Friedel Pia Lindström. After

returning to the United States in 1940, she acted on Broadway before continuing to do

films in Hollywood. The following year, her husband arrived from Sweden with daughter

Pia. Lindström stayed in Rochester, New York, where he studied medicine and surgery at the

University of Rochester. Bergman would travel to New York and stay at their small rented

stucco house between films, her visits lasting from a few days to four months.

According to an article in Life Magazine, the "doctor regards himself as the undisputed

head of the family, an idea that Ingrid accepts cheerfully." He insisted she draw the line

between her film and personal life, as he has a "professional dislike for being associated

with the tinseled glamor of Hollywood." Lindström later moved to San Francisco, California,

where he completed his internship at a private hospital, and they continued to spend time

together when she could travel between filming. Bergman returned to Europe after the scandalous

publicity surrounding her affair with Italian director Roberto Rossellini during the filming

of Stromboli in 1950. In the same month the film was released, she gave birth to a boy,

Robertino Rossellini. A week after her son was born, she divorced Lindström and married

Rossellini in Mexico. On 18 June 1952 she gave birth to the twin daughters Isotta Ingrid

Rossellini and Isabella Rossellini. In 1957 she divorced Rossellini.

The next year she married Lars Schmidt, a theatrical entrepreneur from a wealthy Swedish

shipping family. That marriage lasted nearly two decades, until 1975 when they divorced.

During her marriage with Lindstrom, Bergman had a brief affair with Spellbound costar

Gregory Peck. Unlike the affair with Rossellini, that with Peck was kept private until he confessed