VICTOR SJOSTROM

Victor Sjostrom was a Swedish director and later actor from the 1910s and 1930s. He was very close to his mother who died when he was 7 years old, and that had a great effect on his movies, which he started directing in 1912, and he directed 31 movies through 1915. After he had a great success with The Phantom Carriage in 1920, he was hired by MGM, where he worked until the beginning of sound, and they billed him as "Victor Seastrom". His last MGM movie was He Who Gets Slapped, starring Lon Chaney. He is also well remembered for his two movies with Lillian Gish, The Scarlet Letter and The Wind. His directing career mostly ended with the advent of sound. He became a mentor to Ingmar Bergman, who had a similar disastrous childhood, and in 1957, Sjostrom gave the remarkable starring performance in Bergman's masterpiece, Wild Strawberries. He passed away in 1960 at the age of 80.