Maximilian Schell

Shell began his acting career on stage in 1952, and made his Hollywood film debut in 1958, opposite Marlon Brando in The Young Lions. Just three years later, he won the Academy Award for his performance as an enigmatic defense attorney in Judgment at Nuremberg. Schell received subsequent Oscar nominations as Best Actor in The Man in the Glass Booth (1975), and as Best Supporting Actor for Julia (1977), directed by Fred Zinnemann. His film credits also include Little Odessa, Five Finger Exercise, The Deadly Affair, Return from the Ashes, Simon Bolivar, Topkapi, The Odessa File, A Bridge Too Far, The Chosen and The Rose Garden. It was in 1991 that he re-teamed with Brando in The Freshman, his first comedic role in an American film.

Schell starred in Eighteenth Angel with Stanley Tucci and Chris MacDonald, Telling Lies in America, starring Kevin Bacon and Brad Renfro, written by Joe Esterhas and Left Luggage, written and directed by Jaroen Krabbe and starring Isabella Rossellini, and, following his appearance in John Carpenter’s Vampires, immediately began filming Deep Impact with Robert Duvall, Morgan Freeman, Tea Leoni and Elijah Wood.

Schell’s career as a film director has been equally illustrious with two Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominations for First Love and The Pedestrian. Schell wrote, produced and starred in The Pedestrian, which won 49 international awards, including the Golden Globe. His other directorial works in cinema include Durrenmatt’s End of the Game, the film adaptation of Tales from the Vienna Woods, and the Academy Award nominated documentary Marlene, which also won the New York Film Critics Award, the National Board of Review Award and was credited with giving birth to a new style of cinema.

Schell received an Emmy nomination for his role of an immigrant father in conflict with his all-American daughter in the Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation of Miss Rose White, which was adapted from the 1987 off-Broadway hit. He also won the Golden Globe and CableAce Awards and was nominated for an Emmy as Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Lenin in HBO’s miniseries Stalin. Schell played the title role in the German television production of Hamlet, and starred in the mini-series Young Catherine and the Emmy-winning miniseries Peter the Great.

Born in Vienna to Swiss writer/poet Hermann Ferdinand Shell and his Austrian wife, actress Margarethe Noe von Nordberg, Schell was raised in Switzerland. Although he is best known for his work in film, he has always preserved his links with the theater. In 1958, he made his Broadway debut in Ira Levin’s Interlock. In 1965, he starred in John Osborne’s groundbreaking A Patriot for Me, first at London’s Royal Court Theatre and later on Broadway. He has twice played Hamlet on stage, originally under the direction of the legendary Gustaf Grundgens and later under his own direction.

Schell spent five years with the Salzburg Festival, the oldest and most prestigious festival of its kind, created by Max Reinhardt in 1920. Among Schell’s most memorable theatrical events as director were Tales from the Vienna Woods, presented at the National Theatre in London, The Undiscovered Country at Salzburg, and the contemporary opera Cornet at the Deutsche Opera in Berlin.

Schell is also an accomplished pianist and conductor who has performed in concert with Claudio Abado and the Berlin Philharmonic, The Vienna Symphony, and with Leonard Bernstein in Bernstein’s Beethoven presentation. He received an honorary Doctorate from Chicago University in 1992.