Mai Zetterling

Zetterling was born in Västerås, Sweden to a working class family. She started her career as an actor at the age of 17 at the Royal Dramatic Theatre, the Swedish national theatre, appearing in war-era films.

Zetterling appeared in film and television productions spanning six decades from the 1940s to the 1990s. Her breakthrough as an actress came in the 1944 film Torment written for her by Ingmar Bergman, in which she played a controversial role as a tormented shopgirl. Shortly afterwards she moved to England and gained instant success there with her title role in Basil Dearden's Frieda (1947) playing opposite David Farrar.

After a brief return to Sweden in which she worked with Bergman again in his film Music in Darkness (1948), she returned to Britain and starred in a number of UK films. Some of her notable films as an actress include Quartet (1948), a film based on some of W. Somerset Maugham's short stories, The Romantic Age (1949) directed by Edmond T. Gréville, Only Two Can Play (1962) co-starring Peter Sellers and directed by Sidney Gilliat, and The Witches (1990), an adaptation of Roald Dahl's book directed by Nicolas Roeg. Having gained a reputation as a sex symbol in dramas and thrillers, she was equally effective in comedies, and was active in British television in the 1950s and 1960s.

In 1960 she appeared in Danger Man as Nadia in the episode "The Sisters".

She began directing and publishing novels and non-fiction in the early 1960s, her films starting with political documentaries and a short film titled The War Game (1963), which was nominated for a BAFTA award, and won a Silver Lion at Venice, both for the Best Short Film. Her directorial feature film debut Älskande par (1964, "Loving Couples"), based on the novels of Agnes von Krusenstjerna, caused a scandal at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival for its sexual explicitness and nudity. Kenneth Tynan of The Observer later called it "one of the most ambitious debuts since Citizen Kane". It was not the only film she made that caused controversy for its frank sexuality.

When critics reviewing her debut feature stated that "Mai Zetterling directs like a man", she began to explore feminist themes more explicitly in her work. The Girls, which had an all-star Swedish cast that included Bibi Andersson and Harriet Andersson, discussed women's liberation (or lack thereof) in a society controlled by men, as the protagonists compare their lives to characters in the play Lysistrata, and find that things have not progressed very much for women since ancient times. In 1966, she appeared as a storyteller on the BBC children's programme Jackanory, and in five episodes narrated Tove Jansson's Finn Family Moomintroll.

 

Zetterling was married to Norwegian actor Tutte Lemkow from 1944 to 1953. They had a daughter, Etienne and a son, Louis, who is professor of environmental sociology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She published an autobiography, All Those Tomorrows. From 1958 to 1979, she was married to British author David Hughes, who collaborated with her on her first films as director.

Documents at the National Archives in London show that, as a member of the Hollywood Left, she was watched by MI5 as a suspected Communist. It did not hamper her career, however.

On 17 March 1994, a year after her final role on television, Zetterling died from cancer at her home in London. She was 68 years old.

As Director

As Actor

• Zetterling, Mai (1968). Night Games. Panther Books. ISBN 978-0-586-02449-2. OCLC 936919503.
• Zetterling, Mai (1976). Bird of Passage. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-08120-1. OCLC 2424469.