Max von Sydow and Mathieu Amalric in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly Etienne George/Courtesy of Miramax Films

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Although he only appears in Julian Schnabel's film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly for about ten minutes, Max von Sydow makes, as always, an indelible impression. Von Sydow plays Papinou, the aging, infirm father of Jean-Dominique Bauby, who suffers and in a way conquers a paralyzing stroke in this based-on-true-life film. Now 77, the venerable actor was trained in the theater in Sweden and started making films in 1949; he gained international fame playing Albinus Bloch, the medieval knight who challenges Death to a chess game in director Ingmar Bergman's 1957 The Seventh Seal. He went on to play Christ in George Stevens's 1965 The Greatest Story Ever Told, Father Merrin in William Friedkin's 1973 The Exorcist… not to mention Ming the Merciless in the 1980 Dino De Laurentis–produced Flash Gordon, and Brewmeister Smith in the 1983 Doug and Bob McKenzie farce Strange Brew (a film he remembers very fondly, it turns out).

PREMIERE recently had the privilege of sitting down with von Sydow — a tall, courtly, soft-spoken man with an impressively firm handshake — in New York recently. The talk was of Diving Bell, his acting approach, Bergman (a subject he became visibly emotional about) and more.

I spoke to Ronald Harwood, the screenwriter of Diving Bell. He told me that you wrote a letter to him. And that it was the first time he'd ever received a letter from an actor. And when you two met later on, and he told you that, and you told him it was the first time you had ever written a letter to a screenwriter.
Yes, it was the first time I ever did that. Because the script was just wonderful. It was a wonderful script. The one I got, the first draft, the original. I get script after script, and unfortunately most of them are not very readable. And very frequently the dialogue is silly. But suddenly I get this story, wonderful story, with great imagination and great insight in this poor man's situation. And also, I loved Papinou, my character; I was just totally impressed by what he had done.

You got the script when it was still in English, before it had been translated into French, the language in which it was shot.
I think it was a good translation. Papinou, the character, is French… and as far as I could understand, the translation was very close, very precise.