Marie Richardson

Ingmar Bergman was renowned for his relationships with his actresses and he helped shape Marie Richardson's thespian destiny. Soon after graduating from the National Theater Academy, she became a member of the Royal Dramatic Theater troupe and first worked with Bergman on a production of "King Lear" in 1984. By the time their 1989 collaboration on "Madame De Sade" had been filmed for television, Richardson had played Marta Werkelin in Bille August's 1992 chronicle of the courtship of Bergman's parents, "The Best Intentions," and she returned the same year as Marianne in Daniel Bergman's account of his father's childhood, "Sunday's Children." In 1997, Bergman Senior cast her as battered wife Pauline Thibault in the teleplay "In the Presence of a Clown" and, three years later, she appeared as Anna Berg in his adultery drama "Faithless." Richardson has also worked frequently with husband Jakob Eklund in such thrillers as "Zero Tolerance," "Executive Protection," and "The Third Wave," as well as the spin-off TV cop show "Johan Falk" and the 2003 sexual jealousy saga "Daybreak." She has also become a familiar face to whodunit aficionados as Maja Thysell in five tele-adaptations of Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander novels opposite Rolf Lassgård, also her co-star in the 1991 comedy "Önskas" and the 2000 ensemble drama, "Gossip." Richardson maybe made most headlines by replacing Jennifer Jason Leigh after her scenes had been filmed for Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut," although her best performance came six years earlier in a study of forbidden 19th-century passion, "The Telegraphist."