MAXIMILIAN SCHELL Biography - Actors and Actresses

 
 

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MAXIMILIAN SCHELL

Name: Maximilian Schell                                                             
Born: 8 December 1930 Vienna, Austria                                               
                                                                                     
Maximilian Schell (born December 8, 1930) is an Academy Award-winning Austrian       
actor. He is also a writer, director and producer of several films.                 
                                                                                     
Schell was born in Vienna, Austria, the son of Margarethe (née Noe von Nordberg),   
an actress, and Hermann Ferdinand Schell, a poet, writer, and owner of a             
pharmacy. Schell's late elder sister, Maria Schell, was also an actress; as         
are their two other siblings, Carl and Immy (Immaculata) Schell, and their           
cousin, Catherine Schell. The Schell family moved to Zurich, Switzerland in 1938,   
where young Maximilian later served in the Swiss Army, achieving the rank of         
corporal. He began acting at the Basel Theater.                                     
                                                                                     
Schell made his Hollywood debut in 1958 in the World War II film The Young Lions.   
In 1959, he appeared as Hans Rolfe, the defense attorney, in a live Playhouse 90     
television production of Judgment at Nuremberg. In 1961, he reprised the role,       
winning the Academy Award for Best Actor. In 1974's The Pedestrian, for which       
Schell wrote, produced, directed, and starred, was nominated for Best Foreign       
Language Film.                                                                       
                                                                                     
Schell refused to be typecast. Although he was top billed in a number of Nazi-era   
themed films as The Man in the Glass Booth, A Bridge Too Far, Cross of Iron, The     
Odessa File, Julia, and Judgment at Nuremberg, he has also appeared in Topkapi,     
Krakatoa, East of Java, The Black Hole, The Freshman, Stalin, Deep Impact,           
Candles in the Dark, and Erste Liebe. Since the 1990s, Schell has appeared in       
many German language made-for-TV films, such as the 2003 film Alles Glück dieser   
Erde (All the Luck in the World) opposite Uschi Glas and in the mini-series The     
Return of the Dancing Master (2004), which was based on Henning Mankell's novel.     
                                                                                     
In addition to his international film career, Schell has been active as director,   
writer and actor in European theatre, making his stage debut in 1952, three         
years before his first cinematic role. In 1972 he starred as 'Deeley' in Peter       
Hall's German language premiére of Harold Pinter's Old Times at the Burgtheater     
in Vienna, and in 2006 he appeared in Arthur Miller's Resurrection Blues             
directed by Robert Altman in London at the Old Vic. Schell has also served as       
a writer, producer and director for a variety of films, including the               
documentary film Marlene (1984) with the participation of Marlene Dietrich that     
won several awards. In 2002, he released My Sister Maria, a documentary about       
the career of and his relationship with Maria Schell.                               
                                                                                     
Among fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Schell is known for starring in         
Hamlet, Prinz von Dänemark, a German language version of Hamlet screened on the     
show.