Personal Info
Known For:
Acting
Birthday:
December 8, 1930
Place of Birth:
Vienna, Austria
Social Media
Maximilian Schell
Biography
Maximilian Schell (8 December 1930 – 1 February 2014) was a Swiss actor. Born in Austria, his parents were involved in the arts and he grew up surrounded by performance and literature. While he was still a child, his family fled to Switzerland in 1938 when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany, and they settled in Zürich. After World War II ended, Schell took up acting and directing full-time.
Schell won the Academy Award for Best Actor for playing a lawyer in the legal drama Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). He was Oscar-nominated for playing a character with multiple identities in The Man in the Glass Booth (1975) and for playing a man resisting Nazism in Julia (1977). Fluent in both English and German, Schell earned top billing in a number of Nazi-era themed films. He acted in films such as Topkapi (1964), The Deadly Affair (1967), Counterpoint (1968), Simón Bolívar (1969), The Odessa File (1974), A Bridge Too Far (1977), and Deep Impact (1998).
On television, he received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations for the NBC film Miss Rose White and the HBO television film Stalin (1992), the later of which earned him the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film. He also portrayed Otto Frank in the TV film The Diary of Anne Frank (1980), the Russian emperor Peter the Great in the NBC series Peter the Great (1986), Frederick the Great in the British series Young Catherine (1991), and Brother Jean le Maistre in the miniseries Joan of Arc (1999).
Schell also performed in a number of stage plays, including a celebrated performance as Prince Hamlet. Schell was an accomplished pianist and conductor, performing with Claudio Abbado and Leonard Bernstein, and with orchestras in Berlin and Vienna. His elder sister was the internationally noted actress Maria Schell; he produced the documentary tribute My Sister Maria in 2002.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Maximilian Schell, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Known For
Filmography
| Year | Movie | Role |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | Les brigands | Mr. Escher |
| 2011 | Passion & Poetry: Sam Peckinpah's War | Self (archive footage) |
| 2011 | Jedermann Remixed | Jedermann (archive footage) |
| 2010 | Maximilian Schell - Ein sehnsüchtiger Rebell | Self |
| 2009 | Darkness | |
| 2009 | Black Flowers | Jacob Krinsten |
| 2008 | The Brothers Bloom | Diamond Dog |
| 2007 | The Shell Seekers | Lawrence Sterne |
| 2007 | Die Rosenkönigin | Karl Friedrich Weidemann |
| 2007 | Verstörung - und eine Art von Poesie. Die Filmlegende Bernhard Wicki | Himself |
| 2006 | House of the Sleeping Beauties | Kogi |
| 2006 | Die Alpenklinik | Dr. Alexander Ohlendorf |
| 2005 | Die Liebe eines Priesters | Father Christoph |
| 2004 | The Return of the Dancing Master | Fernando Hereira |
| 2004 | In Conversation: Abby Mann and Maximillian Schell | Self |
| 2004 | Coast to Coast | Casimir |
| 2003 | Alles Glück dieser Erde | Xaver Schönborn |
| 2002 | My Sister Maria | Himself |
| 2002 | Der Bestseller - Mord auf italienisch | Karl Steingraf |
| 2001 | Festival in Cannes | Viktor Kovner |
| 2000 | I Love You, Baby | Walter Ekland |
| 2000 | Just Messing About | Poser |
| 1999 | On the Wings of Love | Hochberg |
| 1998 | Deep Impact | Jason Lerner |
| 1998 | Vampires | Cardinal Alba |
| 1998 | Left Luggage | Mr. Silberschmidt |
| 1997 | The Eighteenth Angel | Father Simeon |
| 1997 | Telling Lies in America | Dr. Istvan Jonas |
| 1997 | Zwischen Rosen | Carl Stern |
| 1996 | The Vampyre Wars | Rodan |
| 1996 | The Thorn Birds: The Missing Years | Cardinal Vittorio |
| 1994 | Little Odessa | Arkady Shapira |
| 1993 | Abraham | Pharao |
| 1993 | Justice | Isaak Kohler |
| 1993 | A Far Off Place | Col. Mopani Theron |
| 1993 | Candles in the Dark | Colonel Arkush |
| 1992 | Stalin | Vladimir Lenin |
| 1992 | Miss Rose White | Mordecai Weiss |
| 1991 | Why Havel? | |
| 1991 | Labyrint | The Filmmaker |
| 1990 | You Can't Live Like That | German Commentator |
| 1990 | The Freshman | Larry London |
| 1989 | The Rose Garden | Aaron |
| 1985 | To Be Hamlet | Self |
| 1985 | Man Under Suspicion | Lawyer Landau |
| 1985 | The Assisi Underground | Col. Müller |
| 1984 | Marlene | Himself |
| 1983 | Les Îles | Fabrice |
| 1983 | The Phantom of the Opera | Sandor Korvin/Phantom |
| 1981 | The Chosen | Professor David Malter |
| 1980 | The Diary of Anne Frank | Otto Frank |
| 1979 | Avalanche Express | Colonel Nikolai Bunin |
| 1979 | The Black Hole | Dr. Hans Reinhardt |
| 1979 | Tales from the Vienna Woods | Theatre Visitor |
| 1979 | Together? | Giovanni |
| 1979 | Players | Marco |
| 1977 | Cross of Iron | Hauptmann Stransky |
| 1977 | A Bridge Too Far | General der Waffen-SS Wilhelm Bittrich |
| 1977 | Julia | Johann |
| 1976 | St. Ives | Dr. John Constable |
| 1975 | The Man in the Glass Booth | Arthur Goldman |
| 1975 | The Day That Shook the World | Đuro Šarac |
| 1974 | The Odessa File | Eduard Roschmann |
| 1973 | The Pedestrian | Andreas Giese |
| 1972 | Pope Joan | Adrian |
| 1972 | Paulina 1880 | Count Michele Cantarini |
| 1970 | First Love | Vater |
| 1969 | Simon Bolivar | Simón Bolívar |
| 1968 | Krakatoa, East of Java | Captain Chris Hanson |
| 1968 | The Castle | K |
| 1968 | Heidi | Richard Sessemann |
| 1967 | The Deadly Affair | Dieter Frey |
| 1967 | Counterpoint | Gen. Schiller |
| 1967 | The Desperate Ones | Marek |
| 1966 | Die venezianischen Zwillinge | Zanetto und Tonio |
| 1966 | John F. Kennedy: Years of Lightning, Day of Drums | German Narrator |
| 1965 | Return from the Ashes | Stanislaw Pilgrin |
| 1965 | Der seidene Schuh | Don Rodrigo |
| 1964 | Topkapi | Walter Harper |
| 1962 | The Reluctant Saint | Giuseppe |
| 1962 | The Condemned of Altona | Franz von Gerlach |
| 1962 | Five Finger Exercise | Walter |
| 1961 | Judgment at Nuremberg | Hans Rolfe |
| 1961 | Hamlet, Prince of Denmark | Hamlet |
| 1960 | The Fifth Column | |
| 1959 | Eine Dummheit macht auch der Gescheiteste | Jegor Dmitritsch Glumow |
| 1959 | Die sechste Frau | Henry Howard |
| 1959 | Judgment at Nuremberg | Otto Rolfe |
| 1958 | The Young Lions | Capt. Hardenberg |
| 1958 | Die Bernauerin | Herzog Albrecht von Bayern |
| 1958 | Children of the Mountains | Josef Ospel |
| 1958 | Der Meisterdieb | |
| 1957 | The Last Ones Shall Be First | Lorenz Darrandt |
| 1957 | Taxichauffeur Bänz | Toni Schellenberg |
| 1956 | The Girl from Flanders | Alexander Haller |
| 1956 | Ein Herz kehrt heim | Wolfgang Thomas, beider Sohn |
| 1956 | Die Ehe des Dr. med. Danwitz | Dr. Oswald Hauser |
| 1955 | The Plot to Assassinate Hitler | Mitglied des Kreisauer Kreises |
| 1955 | Children, Mother, and the General | Soldat, der nicht mehr mitmacht |
| 1955 | Ripening Youth | Jürgen Sengebusch |