Maximilian Schell: biography, filmography and personal life

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:40

Austrian by nationality and Swiss by origin - Maximilian Schell was not only an outstanding actor, but also a director, writer and producer. However, the general public recognized him and remembered him after the release of the film "The Nuremberg Trials" directed by Stanley Kramer in 1960. The talented game of the Austrian was awarded the Oscar.

Short biography of Maximilian Schell

He was born in Vienna to a prosperous Catholic family. His mother was an actress and his father was a playwright. The family fled the capital of Austria in 1938 and settled in Switzerland, in Zurich. Young Maximilian studied German studies, literature, theater studies, art history and musicology in Zurich and then in Munich. He served in the Swiss army and at 22 began his professional acting career. His first stage appearance was at the age of three in one of his father's plays.

Theatrical career

The debut took place in 1953 on the stage of the City Theater while studying at the conservatoryBern. Maximilian Schell showed himself as an actor, playwright and director at the same time. Over the next few years, he moved from one theater to another, but ultimately in 1959 he chose the Chamber Theater in Munich, Germany. However, soon, having accepted the tempting offer of Gustaf Gründgens, he moved to Hamburg, where he worked until 1963.

The actor moved to London in the late 60s. In the English capital, for a long time he was engaged in the translation of Shakespeare's plays and poems. Worked in the theatre. So, in 1978, he received an important for him and significant role in the theatrical world in the play "Named", which he performed for four years. In parallel, Maximilian Schell worked on staging operas and was directing. In 2007, she staged the operetta Viennese Blood written by Johann Strauss. The success was overwhelming, she surprised the theatrical world.

The start of the journey

Shell became world famous thanks to film and television. The first successful work in his career was the role of a deserter in the military drama Children, Mother and General. The film received international attention, partly because of its director Laszlo Benedek, but also because of his anti-war stance. This was followed by the melodrama The Girl from Flanders (1956), the 1957 crime drama And the Last Will Be First, the military drama The Young Lions (1958) by Edward Dmitryk, where he played the captain of the German army, the adventure film Three Musketeer (1960).

Oscar and Golden Globe winner

In 1960, he joined the cast of the legal film drama The Nuremberg Trials, in which he played the lawyer Hans Rolf. The partners on the set were Burt Lancaster, Marlene Dietrich, Spencer Tracy, Richard Widmark, Judy Garland. For a brilliant performance of the role in 1961, the actor Maximilian Schell received an Oscar and a Golden Globe. The picture brought him worldwide fame as a serious dramatic actor.

Career in film and television

The period after the Oscars was the most difficult for him. In subsequent years, he was often torn between worthwhile, but low-budget films and second-rate action films, in which he often took part for commercial reasons: the 1969 adventure drama "Death on Krakatoa Volcano", the sports melodrama "Players" (1979). After The Stubborn Saint (1962) followed by a role in The Hermits of Altona. The most successful was for Maximilian Schell the film-robbery "Topkapi" (1964). The fees for the detective The Case of Suicide (1966), the adventure film Simon Bolivar (1969) and other projects helped him pay the bills for his own productions.

In the late 60s, he turned to producing and directing. The historical melodrama "First Love", released in 1970, received worldwide recognition. Then there were the dramas Pedestrian (1974) and The Judge and the Executioner (1975), the documentary project Marlene (1984). According to him, by 1970 he felt that he was able to "start again" after receiving an Oscar.

In 1975, he played a significant role in the drama The Man in the Glass Booth, portraying a we althy New Yorker kidnapped and taken to Israel for trial. This earned him an Oscar nomination, as did his performance in Julie, a 1977 film.

During the following decades, Maximilian Schell worked in Europe and America, where he starred in the science fiction action film Pitch Black (1979) and the television version of The Phantom of the Opera (1983). Together with his future wife Natalya Andreichenko, he appeared in the mini-series Peter the Great (1986). In the 1990s, he had many screen works: The Newcomer, the series Young Ekaterina, Miss Rose White and Stalin, the adventure melodrama Captive of the Sands, the crime drama Little Odessa, the melodrama Singing in Blackthorn", "The 18th Angel", "Vampires", "Clash with the Abyss", historical drama "Jeanne d'Arc".

In the 2000s, Maximilian Schell continued his career mainly in television. He appeared in the films I Love You Baby, The Song of the Lark, as well as in A Journey to Remember and the comedy Bloom Brothers, the thrillers Black Flowers and Darkness. The last project in his acting career was the detective "Robbers", which was released in 2015.

Wives and daughter

The personal life of Maximilian Schell has never been in the shadows. The press relished the details of his affair in the late 1950s with the ex-wife of the last Shah of Iran, Soraya Esfandiari.

The actor has been married twice. For the first time on the Soviet actress Andreichenko Natalia. With her hemet during the filming of a film about Peter the Great, held in Russia. The couple married in 1985, she was 26 years younger than him. Married in 1989, a daughter appeared, who was named Nastasya. The couple divorced in 2005. At the age of 17, the daughter of Shell and Andreichenko gave birth to a girl, who was named Lea Magdalena. Nastasya lived with her father in Los Angeles, played in films and operettas, plays that he staged.

Then Maximilian Schell dated Elisabeth Mihic. She was also much younger: by as much as 47 years. Since 2008, the actor had a relationship with the singer I. Mikhanovich. They got married in August 2013, almost a year before the actor's death.

Shell was the godfather of Hollywood star Angelina Jolie.

Recently, the Austrian actor suffered from severe joint pain, he moved with great difficulty. Schell died in the clinic on February 1, 2014, without surviving anesthesia after a complex operation. For a long time, the press "inflated" the story of the actor's inheritance, since the will was not officially announced.

Shell is one of the most famous German speaking actors in the world. He and his sister Mary were awarded the 2002 Bambi Award for their contributions to the arts.