Trivia

He was the idol of director Ingmar Bergman, and Bergman wrote Wild Strawberries (1957) with Sjostrom in mind for the lead role. Bergman once said that if Sjostrom had not agreed to do the film, he would not have made it at all.

He was born in the small town of Årjäng, Silbodal, in Sweden. A sculpture in his honor is a part of the famous Sculpture walk in the middle of Årjäng.

He and Edith Erastoff were lovers on- and off-screen. She was pregnant with his daughter while they were filming The Outlaw and His Wife (1918). They married in 1922, after having to wait five years for her divorce.

His father was businessman Olof Adolf Sjöström, born 4 February 1841, in Ljustorp, Västernorrlands län. In 1880 he emigrated to the US, followed soon by the rest of the family. His wife died in New York in 1886, and in 1895 he married the 22-years-younger Maria Lovisa Olsson, just before returning to Sweden. He died destitute in Stockholm on 21 May 1896.

Although he played Naima Wifstrand's son in Wild Strawberries (1957), he was eleven years her senior in real life.

He has directed two films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: He Who Gets Slapped (1924) and The Wind (1928).

His uncle was a leading actor at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm during the latter part of the 19th century: Victor Hartman (1839-1898).

Father of Guje Lagerwall.

Had two daughters with Edith Erastoff: Guje Lagerwall (born 13 January 1918) and Caje Bjerke (born 31 August 1918).

His mother was actress Sofia Elisabeth Hartman, born 7 May 1844 in Stockholm.

Father-in-law of Sture Lagerwall.

He began his career in Sweden, before moving to Hollywood in 1924.

Aged 78, he gave his final acting performance, probably his best remembered, as the elderly professor Isak Borg in Ingmar Bergman's film Wild Strawberries (1957).

He was also known in the United States as Victor Seastrom, and was a pioneering Swedish film director, screenwriter, and actor.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945". Pages 1022-1030. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.