Ullmann began her acting career as a stage actress in Norway during the mid-1950s. She continued to act in theatre for most of her career and became noted for her portrayal of
Nora Helmer in
Henrik Ibsen's play ''
A Doll's House''. She became better known once she started to work with Swedish movie director
Ingmar Bergman. She later acted, with acclaim, in 10 of his movies, including
Persona (1966),
The Passion of Anna (1969),
Cries and Whispers (1972), and
Autumn Sonata (1978), in the last of which her co-actress
Ingrid Bergman resumed her own Swedish cinema career. She co-acted often with Swedish actor and fellow Bergman collaborator
Erland Josephson, with whom she made the Swedish television drama
Scenes from a Marriage (1973), which was also edited to feature-movie length and distributed theatrically. Ullmann acted with
Laurence Olivier in
A Bridge Too Far (1977), directed by
Richard Attenborough. Nominated more than 40 times for awards, including various lifetime achievement awards, she won the best-actress prize three times from the
National Society of Film Critics and three times from the
National Board of Review, received three awards from the
New York Film Critics Circle, and a
Golden Globe. During 1971, Ullmann was nominated for an
Academy Award for Best Actress for the movie
The Emigrants, and again during 1976 for the movie
Face to Face. Ullmann made her New York City stage debut in 1975, also in ''
A Doll's House. Appearances in Anna Christie and Ghosts followed, as well as the less-than-successful musical version of I Remember Mama. This show, composed by Richard Rodgers, experienced numerous revisions during a long preview period, then closed after 108 performances. She also featured in the widely deprecated musical movie remake of Lost Horizon'' during 1973. In 1977, when she appeared on Broadway at the
Imperial Theatre in
Eugene O'Neill's
Anna Christie,
The New York Times said that she "glowed with despair and hope, and was everything one could have wished her to have been" in a performance "not to be missed and never to be forgotten", with her "grace and authority" that was "perhaps more than Garbo...born for Anna Christie:--Or more properly, Anna Christie was born for her." In 1980,
Brian De Palma, who directed
Carrie, wanted Liv Ullmann to play the role of Kate Miller in the erotic crime thriller
Dressed to Kill and offered it to her, but she declined because of the violence. The role subsequently went to
Angie Dickinson. In 1982, Ingmar Bergman wanted Ullmann to play Emelie Ekdahl in his last feature film,
Fanny and Alexander, and wrote the role with this in mind. She declined it, feeling the role was too sad. She later stated in interviews that turning it down was one of the few things she really regretted. and during 2001 chaired the jury of the Cannes Film Festival. She introduced her daughter,
Linn Ullmann, to the audience with the words: "Here comes the woman whom Ingmar Bergman loves the most". Her daughter was there to receive the Prize of Honour on behalf of her father; she would return to serve the jury herself during 2011. She published two autobiographies,
Changing (1977) and
Choices (1984). Ullmann's first film as a director was
Sofie (1992); her friend and former co-actor, Erland Josephson, starred on it. She later directed the Bergman-composed movie
Faithless (2000).
Faithless garnered nominations for both the
Palme d'Or and Best Actress category at the
Cannes Film Festival. In 2003, Ullmann reprised her role for
Scenes from a Marriage in
Saraband (2003), Bergman's final telemovie. Her previous screen role had been in the Swedish movie
Zorn (1994). In 2004, Ullmann revealed that she had received an offer in November 2003 to play in three episodes of the American television series,
Sex and the City. She was amused by the offer, and said that it was one of the few programs she regularly watched, but she turned it down. Later that year,
Steven Soderbergh wrote a role in the movie ''
Ocean's 12'' especially for her, but she also turned that down. During 2006, Ullmann announced that she had been forced to end her longtime wish of making a film based on ''A Doll's House
. According to her statement, the Norwegian Film Fund was preventing writer Ketil Bjørnstad and her from pursuing the project. Australian actress Cate Blanchett and British actress Kate Winslet had been intended to have been cast in the main roles of the movie. She later directed Blanchett in the play A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams, at the Sydney Theatre Company in Sydney, which was performed September through October 2009, and then continued from 29 October to 21 November 2009 at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, where it won a Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Non-resident Production, as well as actress and supporting performer for 2009. The play was also performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in Brooklyn, New York. Ullmann narrated the Canada–Norway co-produced animated short movie The Danish Poet'' (2006), which won the
Academy Award for Animated Short Film at the
79th Academy Awards during 2007. In 2008, she was the head of the jury at the
30th Moscow International Film Festival. During 2012, she attended the
International Indian Film Academy Awards in Singapore, where she was honored for her Outstanding Contributions to International Cinema and she also showed her movie on her relationship with Ingmar Bergman. In 2013, Ullmann directed a
film adaptation of
Miss Julie. The film, released in September 2014, stars
Jessica Chastain,
Colin Farrell, and
Samantha Morton. It was widely praised by the Norwegian press. In 2018, Ullmann narrated ''Wars Don't End'', a documentary about the
Lebensborn war children. In March 2022, the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that Ullmann would receive the
Academy Honorary Award.
John Lithgow presented her with the statue at the
Governors Awards, saying, "For those few who claim that she never would've been called one of our greatest actors without Ingmar Bergman, I would answer, Bergman would probably never been called one of our greatest filmmakers without Liv Ullman". == Honours and causes ==