Ingrid Bergman, one of the most iconic actresses of the golden age of Hollywood, wrote one letter in 1947 that changed her life — and the history of cinema — forever, RadarOnline.com has learned.
At 12, Ingrid Bergman already knew what she wanted to be when she grew up. “Her diary starts, ‘I’m very glad my dad gave me this diary because I can keep a daily note — record of when I will become a very famous actress,’” her daughter Isabella Rossellini told Closer.
A dreamy child who lost her parents at a young age, Ingrid earned a scholarship to the same Swedish drama school that Greta Garbo attended. By the 1940s, she’d become one of Hollywood’s most popular stars, with roles in films like Gaslight (which won Ingrid her first Oscar), The Bells of St. Mary’s, Joan of Arc, Anastasia, Spellbound,and, of course, Casablanca.
Despite her success, Ingrid grew bored of the roles she was offered by the big studios. “I’m not knocking Hollywood, because I had a very good time,” said Ingrid. “I wanted to do something different.”
After watching a film by Italian director Roberto Rossellini, Ingrid wrote him a letter offering to work with him. “I sent it to Minerva Film, and Minerva Film burned down,” recalled Ingrid. “If my letter had been burned, I would never have gone to Italy…. It’s strange how easily the letter could have disappeared, but it didn’t. He got the letter.”
On the set of their first movie together, Stromboli, Ingrid and the director fell in love. The news that she was pregnant with Rossellini’s child turned Ingrid, who was still married to her first husband, Petter Lindstrom, into a pariah overnight. On the U.S. Senate floor, she was called “a horrible example of womanhood and a powerful influence for evil.”
Her daughter Pia Lindstrom, then 12, would become the center of a custody battle between Ingrid and her estranged husband, and not see her mother again for several years. “She felt guilty toward Pia,” said Isabella, one of Ingrid’s three children with Rossellini, whom she wed in 1950. “She was wounded in a very deep way, and she was very confused about how to handle it.”
Though it began with great passion, her union with Rossellini would not last. “Personality-wise, they were so incredibly different,” said daughter Ingrid Rossellini, Isabella’s twin sister. “Mama was so down-to-earth, and Father was such a dreamer.” But the exes would always remain friendly.
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In 1956, Ingrid’s film Elena and Her Men earned glowing reviews, signaling a softening in public opinion about the scandal. “I think she paid her penance,” said Pia. “She had been sent away, done her time, and morals and mores had changed.”
The following year, Cary Grant accepted Ingrid’s Oscar for Anastasia on her behalf. She made her first public appearance at the awards two years later and was welcomed with a standing ovation. Ingrid, who never came back to live in America, said she had “no bitterness” about the painful chapter of her life, and her children were unscathed by the scandal. “They’re the new generation,” she said. “They think it’s all nonsense!”