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Liv naturally bridles at such comparisons, but Mike Frankovich says, "She has the same kind of vulnerability that Ingrid Bergman had. She has great sex, but it's innocent. We thought at first that she was much too young to play in Forty Carats, and she is. But all the other women who wanted the part were either invulnerable or too old. You can't believe that Liv has any promiscuity in her. Even if she has love affairs, she is discreet. In her movies, when she looks at someone, it isn't to say 'Let's go to bed,' but rather 'What kind of man are you?' "
Nor does her appeal turn off when the cameras do; everyone in Hollywood is in love with her. "If only they were all like her, lady actresses," says Lost Horizon Co-Star Peter Finch. "The nicest goddamn actress I've ever seen on a set," says Laslo Benedek, director of a European mystery titled The Night Visitor. Liv has been accustomed to working in Scandinavia for between $10,000 and $20,000 per picture and being treated as just another member of the company. Now she is in the $200,000 bracket and is as delighted with her limousines and roses from the producer as a girl at her first prom. "I like to be regarded as a star," she says. "I like to be at the center of things in a press conference, stay at fancy hotels and swim in luxury. But that's only for a short time. After such a day I also like to go back to my room, close the door and just be myself. Perhaps I go to the mirror, smile at myself and say: 'Remember, Liv, you are just Liv Ullmann, a quite ordinary actress; just a woman who has been luckier than others.' "
Above all, at 33, Liv is a far more seasoned and accomplished performer than most of the new faces that turn up in Hollywood. Humphrey Bogart was once asked who his favorite actor was. He named Spencer Tracy and gave as his reason: "Because you can't see the machinery working." With Liv, the machinery never shows either. Her previous work has already established that she not only has the unobtrusive yet authoritative presence called star quality but is also perhaps the most impeccably naturalistic actress in films today.
Her first Bergman film, Persona (1966), was as big a triumph for her as it was for Bergman. She played a great stage actress who suffers an obscure spiritual crisis and decides never to speak again. Nor does she for the rest of the film, except for two words: "No, don't." The plot traced a duel of personality between the actress and her talkative nurse (Bibi Andersson), between the actress's corruption of soul and the nurse's innocence. Deprived of words, Liv spoke with a glance, a turn of the head, an enigmatic Gioconda smile. For much of the movie, Bergman simply trained his camera on her face—and that was enough. "Bergman taught me how little you can do rather than how much," she says. "I can now use much smaller means to express what I want to say."