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Maximilian Schell

Known for: Acting

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.

Filmography 38

Wiseguy 1987TV show Plex as Amado Guzman
Deep Impact 1998Movie as Jason Lerner
A Bridge Too Far 1977Movie as General der Waffen-SS Wilhelm Bittrich
Cross of Iron 1977Movie as Hauptmann Stransky
The Black Hole 1979Movie as Dr. Hans Reinhardt
Joan of Arc 1999TV show as Brother Jean le Maistre
The Young Lions 1958Movie as Capt. Hardenberg
The Freshman 1990Movie as Larry London
Vampires 1998Movie as Cardinal Alba
The Odessa File 1974Movie Google Play Movies as Eduard Roschmann
Topkapi 1964Movie as Walter Harper
Little Odessa 1994Movie as Arkady Shapira
A Far Off Place 1993Movie as Col. Mopani Theron
Krakatoa, East of Java 1969Movie Plex as Captain Chris Hanson
Left Luggage 1998Movie as Mr. Silberschmidt
Stalin 1992Movie as Vladimir Lenin
Counterpoint 1967Movie as Gen. Schiller
St. Ives 1976Movie as Dr. John Constable
Heidi 1968Movie as Richard Sessemann
Avalanche Express 1979Movie as Colonel Nikolai Bunin
The Chosen 1981Movie Plex as Professor David Malter