37 Facts About Maximilian Schell

Maximilian Schell was an Austrian-born Swiss actor, who wrote, directed and produced some of his own films.

Maximilian Schell won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the 1961 American film Judgment at Nuremberg, his second acting role in Hollywood.

Maximilian Schell appeared in numerous German films, often anti-war, before moving to Hollywood.

Fluent in both English and German, Maximilian Schell earned top billing in a number of Nazi-era themed films.

Maximilian Schell performed in a number of stage plays, including a celebrated performance as Prince Hamlet.

Maximilian Schell was an accomplished pianist and conductor, performing with Claudio Abbado and Leonard Bernstein, and with orchestras in Berlin and Vienna.

Maximilian Schell was born in Vienna, Austria, the son of Margarethe, an actress who ran an acting school, and Hermann Ferdinand Maximilian Schell, a Swiss poet, novelist, playwright and pharmacy owner.

Schell's father was never enthusiastic about young Maximilian becoming an actor like his mother, feeling that it could not lead to "real happiness".

However, Maximilian Schell was surrounded by acting in his early youth:.

The Maximilian Schell family fled from Vienna in 1938 to get "away from Hitler" after the Anschluss, when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany.

In Zurich, Maximilian Schell "grew up reading the classics", and when he was ten, wrote his first play.

Maximilian Schell recalls that as a child, growing up surrounded by the theatre, he took acting for granted and did not want to become an actor at first: "What I wanted was to become a painter, a musician, or a playwright," like his father.

Maximilian Schell later attended the University of Zurich for a year, where he played soccer and was on the rowing team, along with writing for newspapers as a part-time journalist for income.

Maximilian Schell then returned to Zurich, where he served in the Swiss Army for a year, after which he attended the sixth form of University College School, London, for one year before re-entering the University of Zurich for another year, and later, the University of Basel for six months.

Maximilian Schell's elder sister Maria Schell was an actor, as were their siblings, Carl and Immaculata "Immy" Schell.

Maximilian Schell subsequently acted in seven more films made in Europe before going to the US Among those was The Plot to Assassinate Hitler.

In 1958 Maximilian Schell was invited to the United States to act in the Broadway play, "Interlock" by Ira Levin, in which Maximilian Schell played the role of an aspiring concert pianist.

Maximilian Schell made his Hollywood debut in the World War II film, The Young Lions, as the commanding German officer in another anti-war story, with Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift.

In 1960, Maximilian Schell returned to Germany and played the title role in William Shakespeare's Hamlet for German TV, a role that he would play on two more occasions in live theatre productions during his career.

In 1959, Maximilian Schell acted in the role of a defence attorney on a live TV production, Judgment at Nuremberg, a fictionalized re-creation of the Nuremberg War Trials, in an edition of Playhouse 90.

Maximilian Schell won the Academy Award for Best Actor, which was the first win for a German-speaking actor since World War II.

Maximilian Schell wrote, 'Now, when you have my letter in your hand, a beautiful day is coming for you.

In 2011, Maximilian Schell appeared at a 50th anniversary tribute to the film and his Oscar win, held in Los Angeles at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, where he spoke about his career and the film.

Maximilian Schell then produced, directed and acted as a supporting character in End of the Game, a German crime thriller starring Jon Voight and Jacqueline Bisset.

Maximilian Schell had previously directed a stage production of the original play of that name by Odon von Horvath at the National Theatre in London.

Schell's acting in the film has been compared favorably to his other leading roles, with film historian Annette Insdorf writing, "Maximilian Schell is even more compelling as the quick-tempered, quicksilver Goldman than in his previous Holocaust-related roles, including Judgment at Nuremberg and The Condemned of Altona".

Maximilian Schell served as a writer, producer and director for a variety of films, including the documentary film Marlene, with the participation of Marlene Dietrich.

Maximilian Schell creatively showed only silhouettes of her along with old film clips during their interview soundtrack.

Maximilian Schell produced My Sister Maria in 2002, an intimate documentary about his sister, the noted actress Maria Maximilian Schell.

Maximilian Schell was rumored to have been engaged to the first African-American Supermodel Donyale Luna in the mid 1960s.

Maximilian Schell was a semi-professional pianist for much of his life.

On other occasions, Maximilian Schell worked with Italian conductor Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic, which included a performance in Chicago of Igor Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex and another in Jerusalem of Arnold Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw.

Maximilian Schell produced and directed a number of live operas, including Richard Wagner's Lohengrin for the Los Angeles Opera.

Maximilian Schell worked on the film project Beethoven's Fidelio, with Placido Domingo and Kent Nagano.

Maximilian Schell was a guest professor at the University of Southern California and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago.

Maximilian Schell died at the age of 83 on 1 February 2014, in Innsbruck, Austria, after a "sudden and serious illness".

Maximilian Schell's funeral was attended by Waltraud Haas, Christian Wolff, Karl Spiehs, Lawrence David Foldes, Elisabeth Endriss and Peter Kaiser.