#classic-hollywood

#classic-hollywood

There aren't many actors who can boast seven Academy Award nods, but Ingrid Bergman wasn't just any actor. The Swedish star, born in Stockholm in 1915, took home three Oscars throughout her Hollywood career, for Gaslight, Anastasia, and Murder on the Orient Express. She is perhaps most famous for her leading role in the classic romantic drama Casablanca, but also took her talents to the stage, where she earned a Tony as the star of Joan of Lorraine.

I also consider her the greatest movie actress from the thirties to the fifties, if only for a handful of performances-indeed, for a handful of scenes. She was in few great films and not even many good ones, but her acting, at its peak, is different in kind from that of her similarly celebrated peers. Displaying both the most extreme artifice in self-presentation and the most authentic emotion in performance, she exemplifies Hollywood's paradoxes in concentrated form.