About Me
Biography for
Viveca Lindfors
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Birth name
Elsa Viveca Torstensdotter Lindfors
Ms. Lindfors was a Swedish born actress whose stage and screen career in the U.S. and Sweden spanned more than a half century.
She was brought to Hollywood in 1946 by Warner Brothers in the hope that she would be a new Greta Garbo or Ingrid Bergman. She appeared with Ronald Reagan in her first Hollywood film, Don Siegel's Night Unto Night (1949). Perhaps best known as a stage actress, she returned to Sweden in August 1995 to tour with the play "In Search of Strindberg".
The tall, dark Lindfors began her career on the Swedish stage while still a student at the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm. She was featured in several films her native country (notably "The Spinning Family" 1940 and "In Paradise" 1941) before embarking on a Hollywood career. Lindfors played Queen Margaret opposite Errol Flynn in "The Adventures of Don Juan" (1948) and went on to co-star with Ronald Reagan in "Night Unto Night" (1949), directed by her third husband Don Siegel, and "Four in a Jeep" (1951) opposite Ralph Meeker. Typical of Hollywood, many compared Lindfors' elegant countenance and beauty with her fellow countrywoman Greta Garbo.
Lindfors made an acclaimed Broadway debut in 1955, starring in "Anastasia", portraying a woman who claimed to be the daughter of the Czar of Russia. The film role went to Ingrid Bergman.
Lindfors alternated among stage, TV and films throughout the rest of her career. She starred in her own one-woman show "I Am Woman" and appeared with her son Kristoffer Tabori in "My Mother, My Son".
Among her notable feature appearances were "No Exit" (1960), "The Way We Were" (1973), "A Wedding" and "Girlfriends" (both 1978) and "Creepshow" (1981). She wrote, directed and co-starred in "Unfinished Business . . . " (1987), a highly personal, autobiographical drama. Her final film was Henry Jaglom's "Last Summer in the Hamptons" (1995), a Chekhovian-inspired comedy/drama in which she played a grande dame actress spending time with her family.
Family
father:Torsten Lindfords
mother:Karin Lindfords
daughter:Lena Tabori
son:John Tabori
son:Kristoffer Tabori Christopher Donald Siegel
Education:
Royal Dramatic Theater School Stockholm, Sweden
Companion
Don Siegel, husband
Folke Rogard, husband
George Tabori, husband
Henry Hasso, husband
Awards
Emmy Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series "Life Goes On" 1989 - 90
Berlin Film Festival Best Actress Award "No Exit" 1962
Milestones
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1995 Final film appearance, "Last Summer in the Hamptons"
1990 Attacked in Greenwich Village, NYC; man slashed her face with razor, requiring 28 stitches
1987 Feature directorial debut "Unfiinished Business . . . " (also scripted)
1981 Wrote autobiography, "Viveka . . . Viveca, An Actress, A Woman, A Life"
1973 Appeared in one-woman show, "I Am Woman"
1966 Founded and was artistic director of Berkshire Theater Company, Stockbridge, MA
1958 American TV debut, "The Bridge of San Luis Rey"
1954 Starred on Broadway in "Anastasia"
1948 American feature debut, "To the Victor"
1946 Immigrated to US
1940 Film debut "The Spinning Family"
1937 Swedish stage debut
1935 - 1938 Studied at Royal Dramatic Theater School in Stockholm
Signed with Warner Brothers
