Career
Schell made his Hollywood debut in 1958 in the World War II film The Young Lions. In 1959, he appeared as Hans Rolfe, the defense attorney, in a live Playhouse 90 television production of Judgment at Nuremberg. In 1961, he reprised the role on film, winning the Academy Award for Best Actor. 1974's The Pedestrian, which Schell wrote, produced, directed, and starred in, was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film.
Schell refused to be typecast. Although he was top billed in a number of Nazi-era themed films as The Man in the Glass Booth; Counterpoint (1968); A Bridge Too Far; Cross of Iron; The Odessa File; Julia; and Judgment at Nuremberg, he also played more diverse characters in Krakatoa, East of Java; The Black Hole; The Freshman; John Carpenter's Vampires; Topkapi; Stalin; Candles in the Dark; Erste Liebe; Deep Impact; and the television miniseries, Peter the Great (1986), which co-starred Vanessa Redgrave and Laurence Olivier.
Since the 1990s, Schell has appeared in many German language made-for-TV films, such as the 2003 film Alles Glück dieser Erde (All the Luck in the World) opposite Uschi Glas and in the television miniseries The Return of the Dancing Master (2004), which was based on Henning Mankell's novel.
In addition to his international film career, Schell has been active as director, writer and actor in European theatre, making his stage debut in 1952, three years before his first cinematic role. In 1972 he starred as 'Deeley' in Peter Hall's German language premiére of Harold Pinter's Old Times at the Burgtheater in Vienna.
In 1977 he directed Tales from the Vienna Woods at the National Theatre in London. In 2006 he appeared in Arthur Miller's Resurrection Blues directed by Robert Altman in London at the Old Vic. Schell has also served as a writer, producer and director for a variety of films, including the documentary film Marlene (1984) with the participation of Marlene Dietrich that won several awards. In 2002, he released My Sister Maria, a documentary about his late sister Maria Schell.
Read more about this topic: Maximilian Schell
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“I doubt that I would have taken so many leaps in my own writing or been as clear about my feminist and political commitments if I had not been anointed as early as I was. Some major form of recognition seems to have to mark a woman’s career for her to be able to go out on a limb without having her credentials questioned.”
—Ruth Behar (b. 1956)
“From a hasty glance through the various tests I figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating “Low Average Ability,” reserved usually for those just learning to speak the English Language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while another man hits it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“John Brown’s career for the last six weeks of his life was meteor-like, flashing through the darkness in which we live. I know of nothing so miraculous in our history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)