Zetterling, Mai Elisabeth (1925-1994)

Swedish actor and director. After gaining early success with her sexually provocative role in the film Frenzy (1945), she played in several West End theatre productions in London, including The Seagull (1948) and A Doll's House (1953). She subsequently returned to Sweden to launch a career as a director, often exploring feminist issues in films such as Loving Couples (1964).

Zetterling was born in Västerås, trained at the Royal Dramatic Theatre School in Stockholm, and acted in the classical repertoire. After Frenzy and other Swedish film work, she went to the UK, but many of her early films there, such as The Bad Lord Byron (1948), were indifferent; it was in the theatre that she found more artistic reward. After some better films, notably as a comic seductress in Only Two Can Play (1961), she embarked on a directing career in Sweden, beginning with the elegant and sensuous Loving Couples. Some later films, such as The Girls (1969), were considered less successful, and the British-made Scrubbers (1982), set in a girls' borstal, was strongly felt but tended to hysteria. Later she returned to British films in acting roles in The Witches (1989) and Hidden Agenda (1990).