Recognized as one of the greatest European actresses, known for her natural beauty, and widely acclaimed for her intelligent performance, Norwegian actress and film director Liv Ullmann was born on 16 December 1938 in Tokyo. She was born to Janna Erbe and Erik Viggo Ullmann, a Norwegian aircraft engineer whose work demanded extensive travel and was based in Tokyo when Liv was born. During the Second World War, her grandfather was deported to the Dachau Concentration Camp by Nazis for helping Jews to escape from the town of his living in Norway and died in the camp. During the Great War, her family moved to Toronto, the capital city of Ontario in Canada, where her father worked at the Norwegian air force base. After that, they shifted to New York, where her father died of a brain tumor, four years later. Her mother raised her two daughters, working as a bookseller, and eventually, they all moved to Norway and settled in Trondheim.

Liv, which means life in Swedish and Norwegian, was not a good student in her early ages and sometimes pretended to be sick to miss her class. However, she had a burning desire to become an actress and began her career as a stage actress in Norway during the mid-1950s. But her family did not like the idea of her becoming an actress as they considered it inappropriate for one of the family members to get involved in the show business.

She wanted to study dramatic art at the Weber-Douglas School, one of the leading drama schools in the UK, but was denied admission as she was considered lacking talent in the theatrical examination. Finally, she enrolled herself at the Conservatory of Dramatic Art in Oslo and soon proved her worth as a magnificent actress. At the age of nineteen, she got the first opportunity to appear on the silver screen in an uncredited role in Fools in the Mountains (1957), directed by the Norwegian actress and director Edith Carlmar. Consequently, she also bagged the role of the female lead in her next project, The Wayward Girl (1959), the story of a young girl who ran away with her young lover to a cabin in the woods where they met a strange man who tested their relationship. However, the film was treated as a matter of disgust by her family members as she appeared naked in some of the scenes in the movie.

However, at the very onset of her career, Liv Ullmann married the Norwegian psychiatrist Hans Jacob Stang in 1960, who were mere friends. The marriage did not last long, and according to her biographer, the marriage was marred by infidelities on both sides. Finally, they were divorced within five years in 1965, the year which later proved to be crucial as she met Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman in the same year or the year before. After appearing in small roles in a few more films, she appeared in the lead role of Bergman’s complex psychological drama Persona (1966), which made her an international star.

The film deals with themes of duality and personal identity and revolves around a young nurse named Alma, played by Bibi Andersson, and her patient, a well-known stage actress named Elizabeth Vogler, who has suddenly stopped speaking In the middle of a show, played by Liv Ullmann. The film completely changed the course of Liv Ullmann’s life, and the brilliant pair of the Norwegian actress and the Swedish director boosted the Scandinavian cinema with unprecedented glory. Although both of them were married to other persons, and their age-difference was twenty years, gradually she became his muse and his female-alter-ego inspiring him to look deeply into himself. She starred in nine feature films of Bergman, and had her daughter, Linn Ullmann, with him on 9 August 1966, although they were never married. Despite a painful breakup, they always remained entwined in each other’s lives and walking together along a deeply connected path.

After Persona, Liv Ullmann appeared in Bergman’s Hour of the Wolf (1968), his only horror film, and Skammen (Shame 1968), the story of two apolitical musicians and their retreat to a rural island during the Civil War, followed by Passion of Anna (1969), another masterpiece by the master filmmaker. Apart from that, her films with Bergman include Cries and Whispers (1972), the story about three sisters and a maid, struggling with the terminal cancer of one of the sisters, Scenes from a Marriage (1974), exploring the disintegration of the marriage of a couple spanning a period of 10 years, Face to Face (1976), a psychological drama, The Serpent’s Egg (1977), set in 1923 in pre-Nazi Germany, Autumn Sonata (1978), involving the painful discussions of a celebrated classical pianist and her neglected daughter who meet for the first time in years, and Saraband (2003), the final film of Bergman. She received Academy nominations for Best Actress for her performance in Face to Face, and also generated an Oscar nod for her playing the role of Kristina in the historical drama, The Emigrants (1971), directed by Jan Troell.

She also shared her screen presence with Laurence Oliver in A Bridge Too Far (1977), directed by Richard Attenborough. Ingmar Bergman wished her to play the main role in his last feature film Fanny and Alexander (1982), as the role was written for her, keeping her name in mind, but she refused to oblige him as she felt the role was too sad. However, later she regretted her decision.

On 8 September 1985, Liv Ullmann married the businessman Donald Richard Saunders, and although they divorced in 1995 they continued to live together until 2001.

Apart from being nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, Liv Ullmann was nominated more than 40 times for different reputed awards, which included various lifetime achievement awards. She won the best actress prize three times from the National Board of Review, received three awards from the New York Film Critics Circle, and a Golden Globe. She was nominated as the chairperson of the jury at the 34th Berlin International Film Festival in 1984, and chaired the jury of the Cannes Film Festival in 2002. After that, she also acted as the head of the jury at the 30th Moscow International Film Festival in 2008. Liv Ullmann was honored at the International Indian Film Academy Awards in Singapore in 2012 for her Outstanding Contributions to International Cinema. She is also co-founder and honorary chair of the Women’s Refugee Commission and traveled widely as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. In 2005 she was made a Commander with Star of the Order of St Olav, by King Harald V of Norway, and was conferred an honorary Ph.D. From the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in 2006.