Liv Ullmann: «I’m not a legend»

LDarkness is not part of Liv Ullmann’s world. That must be why the book project, The Blue Hourhis third memoir after Change of 1978 and Choices of 1985which was supposed to tell the story of his life between the 70s and 80s, that moment “just before it gets dark” has been archived.

“After you turn 80 you realize that darkness doesn’t exist, it’s just another dimension.” Liv Ullmann, 84 years old, judging by the long story of Liv Ulmann-A Road Less Travelled (“A Road Little Traveled”), the documentary dedicated to her by the Indian director Dheeraj Akolkar (which he had already directed Liv & Ingmar in 2012), presented at the last Cannes Film Festival in the Classics section, has not yet exhausted its supply sense of humor which in the lottery of life is assigned to us at birth.

There were many gifts received by the woman who was awarded the Oscar for lifetime achievement in 2022, and many hardships. In the film she talks about an “anger” that accompanied her throughout her life. And to see her, splendidly coiffed with a chignon that leaves some locks free, there is no room for shadow on that face which in sixty years of career has lent itself to narrating every possible emotion.

“I love close-ups,” he tells us. “They allow you to see what’s beyond the skin.” She is shy (“I don’t speak much, others have to speak to me first, I can stay silent for a long time”), yet she is in love with the camera. «Because she reveals, he is an expert investigator». And she remembers an anecdote – there will be many during the interview – in which she with Ingmar Bergman during the filming of Passion (1969) had an argument over his character’s monologue. «For Bergman she was a murderer, the car accident in which her husband and son had died had provoked it. I didn’t agree. We started shooting, the camera was very close and Ingmar from the comfortable director’s chair tells me, in a pause in the monologue: “I’m leaving, I’m leaving you and I’m taking our son away.” I felt a sort of fury, I raised my voice and as I continued with my jokes I felt the conviction growing within me that certainly, it couldn’t have happened otherwise. She had killed them. (Pauses) This is what being an actor means».

Liv Ullmann, in love with the camera

She wasn’t satisfied with being an actress. She wanted to be a director too. And it wasn’t easy at the beginning judging by what you say in the documentary.
It was very difficult to make myself be taken seriously. I also happened to arrive on set and realize that my assistant had started filming without me. He had broken the first rule of cinema. He would never do that with a man.

Does the anger you speak of come from there?
When I was young I went from a provincial theater to Oslo and was quite successful. Together with me, a colleague had also received a contract from the National Theatre. With a much higher pay than mine. When I protested I was told that he had a family to feed. What about me then? I was a single mother with a little daughter! But at that time I had no sense of right or wrong within me. And I didn’t reply.

Her own worst enemy

Her beginnings were marked by meetings with female directors, however.
I had done Anne Frank on the theater with a woman, but the meeting with Edith Carlmar who gave me the part of the protagonist in my first film was decisive ( Ung flukt, “The Young Flight”), a character with a very casual sexuality. Edith was a strong woman and I think she saw me as a little lost struggling with her role: “How much do you know about these things?” she asked me one day. «You won’t be a virgin?». I was 18 and I was. That film helped me understand a lot of things.

Yet, when it was her turn to direct she revealed herself to be her own worst enemy: on set she brought coffee to the director of photography. She should have brought it herself!
It’s true, and it was Erland Josephson who told me: «Stop it Liv! Now you’re a director, act like a director!”. I was used to pleasing men, bringing them coffee. But it was a man who pointed out to me that it was my responsibility if they didn’t take me seriously.

There is good in not taking yourself too seriously: she has always been an actress and never became a celebrity. They wanted her to wear more makeup when she landed in Hollywood and she replied: “I don’t wear makeup, I’m Norwegian.” And when she compared her condition with that of the most famous Scandinavian in the history of cinema, Greta Garbo, she said she was lucky: “I can always go back to Oslo and eat cheese waffles, but she can’t.”
I’ve been successful in America, but I’ve also done scary things. I never understood why they wanted me for certain films, like The 40-carat lady (1973): I wasn’t a star and Liz Taylor wanted that role too. I had to play a 40-year-old New Yorker who falls in love with a 20-year-old, we were both 35 and I had a strong Norwegian accent. But Gene Kelly was in that movie. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to dance…

The meeting with Greta Garbo

He knew how to run though, he chased Greta Garbo in Central Park.
This says a lot about my narcissism. I was happy at that time. I had been successful at the theater, the Time he wrote that I was the new Garbo, and it wasn’t true. But I was on Broadway with Anna Christie (Greta Garbo had played Eugene O’Neill’s drama at the cinema in 1930, ed) so when I recognized her I told myself that she had to know it at all costs. But as soon as I moved towards her, she quickened her pace and when she saw that I wasn’t giving up on her, she started running. She lost me. I was ashamed of myself for having put that poor woman in difficulty who just asked to be left alone. Mine was just pride, vanity.

Among the most difficult labels for her to remove must have been the definition of “Ingmar Bergman’s muse”.
We made 12 films together and a daughter (Linn, 56, writer and journalist, ed),I directed 3 of his texts. But when we met I was 25 years old and he was 21 older: certainly my life was what it was thanks to that meeting. But John Lithgow when he handed me the Oscar said something that made me very happy: «To those who believe that Liv would never have become one of our greatest actresses without Ingmar Bergman, I reply that Bergman probably would never have been one of our greatest directors without Liv Ullman.” Everyone applauded, so I think I can take credit for that.

Max Von Sydow didn’t like questions about Bergman and once responded rudely to a reporter: “I’m tired of being Bergman’s secretary.” Has this ever happened to you?
No, and they certainly asked me more questions about Bergman than they asked Max. But Max was a genuine man, and a wonderful actor, he had to carry that burden for a long time. We both found a way to free ourselves and we did it together. Fanny and Alexander it was written for the two of us. Max said no, he was tired, he was right. And I told Ingmar that I had already received an offer to make another film, I couldn’t do him. He never forgave me. He wrote me letters in which she called me by my first and last name, “Dear Liv Ullmann.” He made indignant phone calls to me saying that I had given up the actors’ “birthright”, it was very dramatic. For a year she didn’t speak to me, but I was convinced of my choice, I knew that both Max and I had done the right thing. Then when I saw the finished film with Ingmar, I found that he was beautiful, he had rewritten the part to make the character intended for me a younger woman. Then I cried, because I wanted so much to be part of that movie. But at that moment I needed to tell him that I wanted to do comedies, Norwegian films, different things.

Do you have any regrets?
Yes, very many. Maybe it was a bad choice.

Bergman had had a dream at the beginning of your love story in which he revealed to her that you were “painfully connected.” Maybe she needed to get rid of the burden.
Max felt like he had a weight on his shoulders, but I didn’t: I just wanted to show that I was independent.
She declared that for her it is no longer time to lead, but to speak, in her role as founder of the Women’s Refugee Commission, but not only. Why?
It’s a scary world we live in, nothing is in the right place like it seemed when we were young. So I decided that after being very quiet I want to talk to people, because I’m old, I have a duty to do so. They told me I had to learn to use Siri and I learned to talk to her too. I say “Hi Siri” to her almost every day ( laughs ). We need to learn to be together as human beings and talk about what happens to us and what we feel. By getting help if we can’t. When I played Groucha at the theater ( The chalk circle of the Caucasus by Bertoldt Brecht, ed) I had a very good director who told me: «Liv, there is nothing heroic in her gesture» (Groucha is the nurse who saves a newborn baby abandoned by his mother during a revolt, ed ). “You’re poor, you have to do it.” We humans are not wonderful, we are just human. And we need people who have the talent to remind us of this. If you are lucky enough to be an actor, you learn one new thing every day.

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