Entertainment
The secret letter that changed her life
Ingrid Bergmanone of the most iconic actresses from Hollywood’s golden age, wrote a letter in 1947 that changed her life – and the history of cinema – forever: RadarOnline.com has learned.
At 12 o’clock, Ingrid Bergman already knew what she wanted to be when she grew up. “Her diary begins: ‘I am very happy that my father gave me this diary because I can keep a daily entry – an account of when I will become a very famous actress,’” her daughter says. Isabella Rossellini told Closer.
Ingrid, a dreamy child who lost her parents at a young age, earned a scholarship to the same Swedish drama school Greta Garbo attended. By the 1940s, she had become one of Hollywood’s most popular stars, with roles in films such as Gaslighting (with which Ingrid won her first Oscar), The bells of St. Mary’s, Joan of Arc, Anastasia, Enchanted, and of course, Casablanca.
Despite her success, Ingrid became bored with the roles offered to her by the major studios. “I’m not turning Hollywood down because I had a really good time,” Ingrid said. “I wanted to do something different.”
After watching a film by the 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,” Ingrid remembers. “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 left Ingrid, who was still married to her first husband, Peter Lindstrom, became a pariah overnight. In the US Senate she was called ‘a terrible example of femininity and a powerful influence of evil’.
Her daughter Pia Lindstrom, then 12, would become the center of a custody battle between Ingrid and her estranged husband, and would not see her mother for several years. “She felt guilty towards Pia,” said Isabella, one of Ingrid’s three children with Rossellini, whom she married in 1950. “She was hurt in a very deep way and she was very confused about how to deal with it.”
Although it started with great passion, her union with Rossellini would not last. “Personally, they were so incredibly different,” daughter said Ingrid Rossellini, Isabella’s twin sister. “Mom was so down to earth and Dad was such a dreamer.” But the exes would always remain friendly.
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Ingrid’s 1956 film Elena and her men received critical acclaim, indicating a softening of public opinion on the scandal. “I think she paid her fine,” Pia said. “She had been sent away, had served her time, and morals and morals had changed.”
Next year, Cary Grant for which Ingrid’s Oscar was received Anastasia on her behalf. Two years later, she made her first public appearance at the awards ceremony and was welcomed with a standing ovation. Ingrid, who never returned to America, said she had “no bitterness” about the painful chapter of her life, and that her children were unscathed by the scandal. “They are the new generation,” she said. “They think it’s all nonsense!”
