Mai Zetterling on AllMovie

She trained for the stage at the Royal Dramatic Theater School in Stockholm. At age 16 she made both her screen and stage debuts, going on to careers in both dramatic media. She gained international attention for her work in the landmark Swedish film Hets/Torment/Frenzy (1944), in which she portrayed a simple girl victimized by a sadistic professor; as a result, in 1946 she was invited to England to star in Frieda, after which she appeared in many British and some Hollywood films. She gave up screen acting in the early '60s in favor of working behind the camera. In 1963 she won a first prize at the Venice Film festival for her directorial debut, The War Game, a documentary she co-wrote with her husband, David Hughes. She went on to direct a number of Swedish films; she also wrote novels, one of which, Night Games, provided the basis of her second feature film (film, 1966). In 1990 she acted in two films, two-plus decades after her last screen appearance.