Maximilian Schell

Maximilian Schell (8 December 1930 – 1 February 2014) was a Swiss actor, theatre director, Maximilian Schell was born on December 8, 1930, in Vienna, AustrIa, to a culturally rich family. His mother, Margarethe Noé von Nordberg, was an actress and acting teacher, and his father, Hermann Ferdinand Schell, a poet and playwright. Raised amid literature and theater, Schell debuted on stage at the age of three. Following the Nazi annexation of Austria, his family fled to Zurich, Switzerland. Schell studied philosophy, art history, and journalism at the University of Zurich, LMU Munich, and the University of Basel, and served briefly in the Swiss Army before dedicating himself fully to acting. Filmmaker, and musician of Austrian origin. He was one of the most internationally acclaimed German-speaking actors of his generation, earning accolades for his work on both screen and stage. Born and initially raised in Vienna, where his parents were involved in the arts, he grew up surrounded by performance and literature. While he was still a child, his family fled to Switzerland in 1938 when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany, and they settled in Zürich. After the Second World War, Schell took up acting and directing full-time.

Schell won the Academy Award for Best Actor for playing a lawyer in the legal drama Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). He was Oscar-nominated for playing a character with multiple identities in The Man in the Glass Booth (1975) and for playing a man resisting Nazism in Julia (1977). Fluent in both English and German, Schell earned top billing in a number of Nazi-era themed films. He acted in films such as Topkapi (1964), The Deadly Affair (1967), Counterpoint (1968), Simón Bolívar (1969), The Odessa File (1974), A Bridge Too Far (1977), and Deep Impact (1998). He made his film directorial debut with the period romantic drama First Love (1970), and would be nominated for the German Film Award for Best Director three times.

On television, he received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations for the NBC film Miss Rose White and the HBO television film Stalin (1992), the later of which earned him the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film. He also portrayed Otto Frank in the TV film The Diary of Anne Frank (1980), the Russian emperor Peter the Great in the NBC series Peter the Great (1986), Frederick the Great in the British series Young Catherine (1991), and Brother Jean le Maistre in the miniseries Joan of Arc (1999).

Schell also performed in a number of stage plays, including a celebrated performance as Prince Hamlet, and was a director of stage plays and operas. He was an accomplished pianist and conductor, performing with Claudio Abbado and Leonard Bernstein, and with orchestras in Berlin and Vienna. The Deutsches Filminstitut called him "a universal artist." His elder sister was actress Maria Schell; he directed the documentary tribute My Sister Maria in 2002.

Awards: Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, Romy, Austrian Decoration for Science and Art, Steiger Award, Academy Award for Best Actor, Bernhard Wicki Award, Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama, Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film, Mary Pickford Award Education: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, University of Zurich, University of Basel, Bern Academy of the Arts

Source: Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilian_Schell