Born Nils Anton Alfhild Asther, he was the son of Swedish nationals Anton Andersson Asther (born February 21, 1865, Caroli,
Malmö) and Hildegard Augusta Åkerlund (born November 3, 1869, in Södra Sallerup,
Malmöhus County). Although Asther had promised Åkerlund marriage, she was unwed on giving birth to Nils in the Sankt Matthæus Parish of the
Copenhagen borough of
Vesterbro where she very briefly stayed. Thus, due to the marriage already being promised, Nils was technically not illegitimate; when his parents married on May 29, 1898, it was noted Anton officially acknowledged the boy as his. He spent his first year as a foster child in
Hyllie, Sweden with saddlemaker Rasmus Hellström and wife Emilia Kristina Möller. He was
christened there on February 26, 1897, before being returned to his biological parents who then wed in Malmö. His older half-brother, Gunnar Anton Asther (born March 4, 1892, in Caroli, Malmö) was his father's child from a previous marriage to Anna Paulina Olander, who died in July 1895. in 1925 As a young man, Asther moved to
Stockholm, where he received acting lessons from
Augusta Lindberg. It was through Lindberg that Asther received his first theatrical engagement at Lorensbergsteatern in
Gothenburg, and in 1916
Mauritz Stiller cast him in
The Wings (Swedish:
Vingarna), a 1916 gay-themed Swedish silent film directed by
Mauritz Stiller, based on
Herman Bang's 1902 novel
Mikaël. In
Copenhagen, actor
Aage Hertel of the
Royal Danish Theatre took Asther under his wing. This soon led to a number of film roles in Sweden, Denmark and Germany between 1918 and 1926.
Hollywood In 1927, Asther left for Hollywood, where his first film was
Topsy and Eva. By 1928 his good looks had made him into a leading man, playing opposite such stars as
Pola Negri,
Marion Davies and
Joan Crawford. He grew a thin mustache which amplified his suave appearance. One of his most popular films was
Our Dancing Daughters, starring
Joan Crawford,
Johnny Mack Brown,
Anita Page, and
Dorothy Sebastian. Asther was cast opposite Greta Garbo in
Wild Orchids as the tempting
Javanese Prince De Gace. With the arrival of
sound in movies, Asther took
diction and voice lessons to minimize his accent, and was generally cast in roles where an accent was not a problem, such as the Chinese General Yen in
The Bitter Tea of General Yen. Asther made six films there. He returned to Hollywood in 1940, and although he made another 19 films up until 1949, his career was never the same, and he appeared mostly in small supporting roles. In the early 1950s, Asther tried to restart his career in television, but managed only to secure roles in a few episodes of minor TV series. he returned to Sweden, almost destitute. There, he managed to get an engagement with a local theater and had four film roles before finally giving up on acting in 1963 and devoting his time to painting. ==Homosexuality==