Who dated John Van Eyssen?

  • Ingrid Bergman dated John Van Eyssen from ? until ?. The age gap was 6 years, 6 months and 19 days.

John Van Eyssen

Matthew John Du Toit Van Eyssen (19 March 1922 – 13 November 1995) was a South African born actor, agent and film production executive in the UK. He moved to Britain following the Second World War, attending the Central School of Speech and Drama. In 1951 and in 1954 he played the role of Lucifer in the York Cycle of Mystery Plays, first revived in 1951 as part of the Festival of Britain.

Van Eyssen appeared in films from 1950 as well as on stage (playing Cassio in Orson Welles' 1951 production of Othello, for example) but achieved his greatest fame as an actor when he portrayed Jonathan Harker in the Hammer Film Productions version of Dracula (released as Horror of Dracula in the US) in 1958.

He left acting in 1961 to become head of the Grade Organisation literary agency. His subsequent clients were Franco Zeffirelli, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. He left the business in 1965 to work for the UK division of Columbia Pictures, eventually becoming Managing Director in July 1969. Among the films he oversaw were A Man for All Seasons (1966), Born Free (1966), Georgy Girl (1966), To Sir, with Love (1967), The Taming of The Shrew (1967), and Oliver! (1968). Both Oliver! and A Man for All Seasons won Best Picture Academy Awards. In 1970, he was promoted to Worldwide Head of Production (ex-USA) and moved to New York.

After his tenure at Columbia, Van Eyssen became an independent producer, returning to the UK in 1991 to establish Britain's premier showcase for talented young filmmakers, the Chelsea Film Festival. He was longtime companion of Ingrid Bergman in the years before her death in 1982.

His son, David Van Eyssen, is a visual artist, and a producer-director known for the science fiction streaming series RCVR.

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Ingrid Bergman

Ingrid Bergman

Ingrid Bergman (29 August 1915 – 29 August 1982) was a Swedish actress. With a career spanning five decades, Bergman is often regarded as one of the most influential screen figures in cinematic history. She won numerous accolades, including three Academy Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, a Tony Award, four Golden Globe Awards, BAFTA Award, and a Volpi Cup. She is one of only four actresses to have received at least three acting Academy Awards (only Katharine Hepburn has four). In 1999, the American Film Institute recognized Bergman as the fourth-greatest female screen legend of Classic Hollywood Cinema.

Born in Stockholm to a Swedish father and German mother, Bergman began her acting career in Swedish and German films. Her introduction to the U.S. audience came in the English-language remake of Intermezzo (1939). Known for her naturally luminous beauty, she starred in Casablanca (1942) as Ilsa Lund. Bergman's notable performances in the 1940s include the dramas For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), Gaslight (1944), The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), and Joan of Arc (1948), all of which earned her nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress; she won for Gaslight. She made three films with Alfred Hitchcock: Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946), and Under Capricorn (1949).

In 1950, she starred in Roberto Rossellini's Stromboli, released after the revelation that she was having an affair with Rossellini; that and her pregnancy before their marriage created a scandal in the U.S. that prompted her to remain in Europe for several years. During this time, she starred in Rossellini's Europa '51 and Journey to Italy (1954), the former of which won her the Volpi Cup for Best Actress. The Volpi Cup was not awarded to her in 1952 because she was dubbed (by Lydia Simoneschi) in the version presented at the Festival; she was awarded posthumously in 1992, and the prize was accepted by her son Roberto Rossellini. She returned to Hollywood, earning two more Academy Awards for her roles in Anastasia (1956) and Murder on the Orient Express (1974). During this period she also starred in Indiscreet (1958), Cactus Flower (1969), and Autumn Sonata (1978) receiving her sixth Best Actress nomination.

Bergman won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for the Maxwell Anderson play Joan of Lorraine (1947). She also won two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for The Turn of the Screw (1960), and A Woman Called Golda (1982). In 1974, Bergman discovered she was suffering from breast cancer but continued to work until shortly before her death on her sixty-seventh birthday in 1982. Bergman spoke five languages—Swedish, English, German, Italian, and French—and acted in each.

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