Ingrid Bergman [ a ] 29 August — 29 August was a Swedish actress. She is one of only four actresses to have received at least three acting Academy Awards only Katharine Hepburn has four. Her introduction to the U. Known for her naturally luminous beauty, she starred in Casablanca as Ilsa Lund. Mary's , and Joan of Arc , all of which earned her nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress ; she won for Gaslight. In , she starred in Roberto Rossellini 's Stromboli , released after the revelation that she was having an affair with Rossellini; that and her pregnancy before their marriage created a scandal in the U.
During this period she also starred in Indiscreet , Cactus Flower , and Autumn Sonata receiving her sixth Best Actress nomination. In , Bergman discovered she was suffering from breast cancer but continued to work until shortly before her death on her sixty-seventh birthday in Although she was raised in Sweden, she spent her summers in Germany and spoke fluent German.
Bergman was raised as an only child, as two older siblings had died in infancy before she was born. When she was two and a half years old, her mother died. She learned to create imaginary friends as a child. Justus was a photographer and loved documenting his daughter's birthdays with his camera. She enjoyed dancing, dressing up, and acting in front of her father's lenses. Losing her parents at such a young age was a trauma that Bergman later described as "living with an ache", an experience of which she was not even aware.
After her father's death, Bergman was sent to live with her paternal aunt, Ellen, who died of heart disease six months later. Bergman then lived with her paternal uncle Otto and his wife Hulda, who had five children of their own. She also visited her maternal aunt, Elsa Adler, whom the young girl called Mutti Mom according to family lore. Bergman spoke Swedish and German as first languages , English and Italian acquired later, while living in the U.
She acted in each of these languages at various times. Bergman received a scholarship to the state-sponsored Royal Dramatic Training Academy , where Greta Garbo had some years earlier earned a similar scholarship. This was "totally against procedure" at the school, where girls were expected to complete three years of study before getting such acting roles. Bergman's first film experience was as an extra in the film Landskamp , an experience she described as "walking on holy ground".
