Background
Bjork, Anita was born on April 25, 1923 in Tallberg Dalecarlia.
Bjork, Anita was born on April 25, 1923 in Tallberg Dalecarlia.
Studied at Royal Dramatic Theatre School in Stockholm.
It is enough only to see Miss Julie (51, Alf Sjoberg), to understand that Anita Bjork was one of the great screen actresses. Yet it seems like a part of Bjork’s bad luck that that very intelligent rendering of Strindberg, with different time periods in the same frame, has fallen into neglect.
Another famous piece of her bad luck was that after Hitchcock had seen her in Miss Julie and wanted her for I Confess (opposite Montgomery Clift), Warners decreed that she was insufficient box office—so use Anne Baxter instead. (They were also anxious because Bjork arrived with a lover and an illegitimate child, so that they feared another Ingrid Bergman-like scandal.) Slip Bjork’s pensive face into its images and I Confess becomes a subtler, more painful picture.
Still, the greatest mystery may be why Bjork worked only once with Ingmar Bergman, in Secrets of Women (52). She was only one actress in a great generation, but one wonders if she had done something to offend the big man.
She made her debut in The Road to Heaven (42, Sjoberg), and she soon became a player with Stockholm’s Royal Dramatic Theatre. Her other films include Kvinna utan Ansikte (47, Gustaf Molander); Kvartetten Som Sprcingdes (50, Molander); to Germany for the American film Night People (54, Nunnallv Johnson), where she plays the traitor; Sângen om den Eldroda Blom-man (56, Molander); Damen i Svart (58, Arne Mattsson); Korkarlen (58, Mattsson); Mannekang i Rott (58, Mattsson); Square of Violence (61, Leonardo Bercovici); Loving Couples (64, Mai Zetterling); Adalen 31 (69, Bo Widerberg).
Married Stig Dagerman (deceased).