Ingrid Bergman (Portrait Treatment) 2010

1. Bergman was born in Stockholm, Sweden, on August 29, 1915 to a mother who died when she was only two and a father who died when she was 12, after which she went to live with an elderly uncle. Her father encouraged her play-acting and even helped her find funny hats and costumes to dress up in while he photographed her. At 18, after school graduation, the lonely and shy girl decided to become an actress.

2. Her luck was as phenomenal as her talent. In New York City, a Swedish couple praised a film of hers to their son, an elevator operator in the apartment building where one of film producer David O. Selznick's young talent scouts lived. Six months later, Ingrid was on her way to Hollywood. "I owe my whole career to that elevator boy", she would say laughingly.

3. After Germany initiated World War II, Bergman, "felt guilty because she had so misjudged the situation in Germany" while she was there filming Die vier Gesellen (The Four Companions). According to one of her biographers, Charlotte Chandler (2007), she had at first considered the Nazis only a "temporary aberration, 'too foolish to be taken seriously.' She believed Germany would not start a war." Bergman felt that "The good people there would not permit it." Chandler adds, "Ingrid felt guilty all the rest of her life because when she was in Germany at the end of the war, she had been afraid to go with the others to witness the atrocities of the Nazi extermination camps."

4. Bergman could speak Swedish (her native language), German (her second language, learned in school), English (learned when brought over to United States), Italian (learned while living in Italy) and French (her third language, learned in school). In addition, she acted in each of these languages at various times. Fellow actor John Gielgud, who had acted with her in Murder on the Orient Express and who had directed her in the play The Constant Wife, playfully mocked this ability when he remarked, "She speaks five languages and can't act in any of them."
5. Bergman died in 1982 on her 67th birthday in London, England, following a long battle with breast cancer.