interview Max Von Sydow
chatted with Nathaniel on November 30th, 2007 @ the Pierre Hotel
Max
Von Sydow on Ingmar Bergman, Woody Allen, and his rich history on the stage and in the cinema |
Previous Page
Nathaniel had just asked Max von Sydow about public perceptions of Bergman...
Max von Sydow: I don't know what people understand or misunderstand. But I presume that most people think that he was an awfully serious and difficult person as a director. Which he was not. On the contrary, he was—he was a man of great charm and great intelligence of course. Great charm with a very kind of fresh, direct sense of humor, creating a lot of fun and enthusiasm around the project whether it was a film production or on stage. He had the ability to really, how should I say this, make people feel that they were very important for his—for his art… and make them give their uttermost to together achieve something extraordinary. He was very inspirational in that respect.
Nathaniel: So in person there was humor there. That's actually one of the critiques people have of his films –not one I share, I think he's brilliant –that… that they're so serious that there is no…Max von Sydow: Well, some of them are, most of them are. But making them was rarely a serious --of course making the serious scenes that was done with great seriousness and with enormous concentration. But inbetween there was a lot of joking.
~WOODY ALLEN~
Nathaniel: Interesting. Now, we always hear that Woody Allen doesn't communicate much with his actors. But I imagine with you when you did Hannah and Her Sisters… did he barrage you with questions about Bergman?
MVS: Not really. But we talked about him. I don't remember really, I don't know. I worked with him for two weeks or three weeks. I--I only know about him what happened them. I don't know. Maybe that was the way he worked on that film. Maybe he does other things in other situations. But no he didn't. He didn't interview me on Bergman.
N: I was surprised after that film that you didn't work with Woody Allen anymore.
MVS: I would be happy to work with him. He never asked me. But at that same time I think that most of his stories are…well of course very American but also very New York.
N: Right.
MVS: Which I am not so in that case if he would need me it would be for somebody –some sort of outsider which--which my character in Hannah and Her Sisters is.
N: That's one of my very favorite characters of yours. I love that film.
MVS: It's a wonderful film. It was a great film.
N: I love the sort of discussion that comes in with that character in terms of, you know, people wanting art for the wrong reasons. He's a very serious person dealing with unserious people.
MVS: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 'I don't sell things by the meter' [laughter]
N: The guy wanting the color
MVS: …with his sofa or whatever.
N: Did that character have resonance for you in terms of --some people, I think, obsess on actors for the wrong reasons just as some people want paintings for the wrong reasons. You know there's this culture of celebrity that really has nothing to do with acting.
MVS: Well, yes. People who don't know anything about acting I think have almost all the time the wrong concept about what acting is. I think that --I don't know. Acting acting is difficult to talk about because there is no terminolovy. We can't discuss acting like musicians can discuss music.
N: Because it's so interior?
MVS: Yes, yes, because it's so personal. Yes, it's very interior. It's something that happens within you: it is fantasy and it is experience and it is imagination and… [pause] People think, I think that people believe that actors, when they are in a play or when they are in a film, that they suddenly become the characters they are portraying. That's not true.
N: That'd be very dangerous for you with some of the characters you've played.
MVS: Yeah, yeah, yeah… If you did you'd go crazy.
N: Well that's the stereotype isn't it?
Many faces of Max (from top left, clockwise): Pelle the Conqueror (1987), Flash Gordon (1980), Emotional Arithmetic (2007), Three Days of the Condor (1975), Minority Report (2002), Intacto (2001)
MVS: Often people –well, often people have asked me 'Well, isn't it difficult to step out of the real character?' Or ' Do you --Does it take long before you can get rid of your character?' By that I presume they mean that they think I transform myself into somebody else and I have a hell of a time to get rid of this in order to find my private self after the show is over or the film is over. Of course that's not at all it. I am me all the time. But when the camera rolls or when the curtain rises I interpret the character I'm supposed to play and…and I do that with my--with my own experiences and with my own imagination and then when the curtain falls I cease acting and I'm… I'm again all me.
N: You are Max von Sydow.
MVS: Yes. I mean… this is people. I have a feeling people don't listen when I say these things because they don't want it to be like that. They prefer that it's more exciting.
N: That it's actually transformative.
MVS: Yes, yes.
next and final page:
on playing religious characters and what he's looking for next.
