Bergman

Ingrid Bergman was born beautiful, but, unusually for one so blessed, she knew that beauty is never enough. She wanted to be great as well. Did any movie star of the classic era demonstrate more ambition? On the stage, she performed Strindberg, Ibsen, Turgenev, Shaw, and O'Neill - some several times. On television she acted in Zweig, Henry James, and Cocteau, and in movies there was Joan of Arc (1948) and a relentless film for Ingmar Bergman, Autumn Sonata (1978). Those stage performances were acclaimed in their time, but they are gone.

What is left is a succession of films recording an indelible combination of profoundly female beauty with stolid peasant strength - a tawny sensuality that made her particularly adept at portraying capitulation to desire. No leading lady ever melted into her leading men more convincingly, yet Bergman never seemed to be fully emotionally involved with any of her three husbands. She needed romance more than she believed in love, which is why she had affairs with so many strongly masculine men: Gary Cooper, Victor Fleming, Robert Capa, Yul Brynner, and Anthony Quinn. Orphaned at the age of 12, she transferred the child's need for parental security to her profession.

The film set - the warming lights, the easy camaraderie of the crew, the affectionate regard of her fellow actors - was always more meaningful, more rewarding than real life. Her on-screen emotional dynamic was a canny inversion of the normal pattern.