Top 10 Actor-Director Pairings
Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman
Among the superlatives that might be tossed his way, Bergman was surely the most probing writer of women's roles, the most acute director of actresses. Harriet and Bibi Andersson, Ingrid Thulin and Gunnel Lindblom caught fire in the Swede's existential dramas. He wrote searing roles for them; they gave body and soul to his ideas, becoming for a time his muses, often his mistresses. Bergman's last, most lasting actress liaison was with the Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann. Her soft features and stern resolve inspired a string of stern masterworks, starting with 1966's Persona, in which she played a mute actress. Ullmann was no mere Trilby to Bergman's Svengali. She became his eloquent interpreter, later directing two of his screenplays. Saraband (2003), with Bergman again directing and Ullmann starring, climaxed nearly 40 years of an exemplary partnership.