Björn Andrésen, Swedish Actor of “Death in Venice,” Dies at 70
According to CinemaDrame News Agency, Björn Andrésen, the Swedish actor and musician best known for his role in Death in Venice, has died at the age of 70. Kristina Petri, the director of the documentary The Most Beautiful Boy in the World, which explored the impact of fame on Andrésen’s life, confirmed his death in an interview with the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, though the cause of death remains unknown.
At the age of 15, Andrésen appeared in Death in Venice, directed by Italian filmmaker Luchino Visconti. The film is an adaptation of the 1912 novella of the same name by German author Thomas Mann. Andrésen played a young boy who becomes the object of obsession for an older man, portrayed by Dirk Bogarde. At the film’s premiere, Visconti famously introduced Andrésen as “the most beautiful boy in the world.”
Andrésen once said that when he was just 16, Visconti took him and a group of older men to a gay nightclub. Although he was heterosexual, Andrésen described the experience as “deeply uncomfortable”: “It was a kind of social suicide. But that was just the first of many such encounters.”
After the film’s release, Visconti never contacted Andrésen again. Yet the label of “the most beautiful boy in the world” haunted him, casting a long shadow over both his personal life and career. In a 2003 interview with The Guardian, he said, “I felt like a strange animal trapped in a cage.” Four years ago, in another interview with the same outlet, he added that if Visconti were still alive, he would tell him to “go to hell,” saying the director “didn’t give a damn” about his feelings.
Andrésen also remarked, “Nowhere else—not even in film or theatre—have I met so many fascists and idiots. Luchino [Visconti] was a kind of cultural predator who would sacrifice anything or anyone for his film.”
In that same interview, Andrésen said that Death in Venice had “destroyed his life quite thoroughly,” lamenting that he would forever be remembered for that film, despite being a talented pianist and composer with a large following in Japan.
Years later, Kristina Petri and Kristina Lindström turned the phrase “The Most Beautiful Boy in the World” into a documentary that chronicled the tragedies of Andrésen’s life. The film premiered at Sundance and won the Grand Jury Prize for Best International Documentary.
Andrésen lost his father in a car accident, and his mother died by suicide when he was only ten years old. He had two children with his ex-wife, poet Susanna Roman, but one of them died at just nine months old. Following his child’s death, Andrésen suffered severe depression and turned to alcohol. Over his career, he appeared in more than 30 films and TV series, including a brief role in Ari Aster’s Midsommar.
