Björn Andrésen, Swedish actor who starred in Death in Venice, dies aged 70

[iendo]

Björn Andrésen, the Swedish actor best known for his breakout role in the 1971 film Death in Venice, has died aged 70.

At 15, Andrésen was cast in Italian director Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice, based on Thomas Mann’s novella, in which he played Tadzio, a beautiful boy with whom an older man, played by Dirk Bogarde, becomes obsessed.

Visconti called Andrésen “the most beautiful boy in the world” in the press, a title which stuck – much to the dismay of Andrésen, who would later speak of how his negative experience working with Visconti affected the rest of his life...

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/oct/27/bjorn-andresen-swedish-actor-dies-aged-70

[PeterRS]

Andrésen came to hate having been part of Death in Venice. Not gay himself, he was surrounded in that movie by gay men, principally the director Lucino Visconti and the lead actor Dirk Bogarde. Visconti's production team was also mostly gay but Visconti had warned everyone not to put a finger on his young star. As Andrésen himself said, once shooting was complete, Visconti took everyone to a gay bar in Venice. He was just 16. Andrésen hated it, thinking everyone was looking at him like their next "meaty dish". He felt Visconti "didn't gave a fuck" to what he himself might be feeling. After the movie Visconti never spoke to him again.

Unlike many young aspiring actors, Andrésen had never wanted to be on the stage or in film. An accomplished pianist and musician, he loved music and wanted that to be his life. It was his grandmother (his parents had died when he was young) who pushed him to audition for the role. What he thought might be "a cool summer job" ruined his life. He hated the title accorded him "The Most Beautiful Boy In The World" and all the worldwide publicity and particularly gay attention that was focussed on him after the movie. In 2003 the Australian feminist author Germaine Greer wrote a book titled The Boy that featured the 15-year old Andrésen on the cover without his permission. He was furious.

Yet by this time he had accepted that this would be the title of a documentary about his life made in 2001. This shows much of the tragedy he endured. His marriage and subsequent divorce, lying quite drunk next to his beloved 9-month old son only to wake and discover he had died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. He entered a period of major depression and became an alcoholic. Yet he told the directors of the documentary that he regretted little in his life apart from a year in Paris in his early 20s. Promised a role in a film which was never in fact made, he was installed in an apartment by an older man and paid a generous stipend. I read somewhere that he did have one gay experience which he did not enjoy. I suspect this probably happened during that Paris sojourn.

He continued to make music and the occasional movie, The last was in 2019 of him as an old man who tries to commit suicide. It is tempting to think that this photo below was taken during the filming of that role. But it was actually taken two years later.

I wonder what other readers thought of Death in Venice. I loved it when I first saw it in the cinema. Visconti had an eye for capturing the beauty of the Venice of that period and those who visited it. And that long, long opening shot of the steamer gradually appearing out of the dark morning mist sets the tone perfectly. Bogarde also gives a masterful performance as Aschenbach and the use of the Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony with its underlying emotional intensity was perfect. But in watching the DVD a few times with friends, I am struck by what appears to me a sense of artificiality in Andrésen's performance. I feel that too often Tadzio gives Aschenbach a sort of "come hither" look which is not in Thomas Mann's novella. Sometimes its just a gaze - as on the beach; at others a hand resting on the hip when on the hotel terrace. It may be that Visconti intends this to be only in Aschenbach's mind. Whatever the reason, to me it goes just a shade too far in making Aschenbach realise the essence of beauty and perfection that his music has lost.

Photo: Fredrik Sandberg/TT/Shutterstock

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/oct/28/bjorn-andresen-obituary

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/bjorn-andresen-dead-death-in-venice-most-beautiful-boy-1236410476/

[vinapu]

he looks very sad old men of this picture and he was not even that old

[PeterRS]

Clearly his life was very far from the proverbial "bowl of cherries." I wonder how much his experience in playing Tadzio in the movie really did affect his life thereafter, and how much his family circumstances of, for example, losing both parents before he was ten (it was only later he learned that his mother had committed suicide) have to be factored in. Since he wanted to become a musician, he cannot have been the withdrawn, introspective type. Clearly, though, he absolutely hated all the hoopla surrounding him and the movie around the world, especially in Japan where for several years he was treated like a pop star. As he relates in a Guardian article four years ago, for him it was "a living nightmare."

“I don’t think it’s ethically defensible to let a 16-year-old bear the burden of advertising the damn film,” he says. “Especially not when you come back to school and you hear, ‘Hi there, angel lips.’ A guy who’s in the middle of his own teenage hormone tempest doesn’t want to be called ‘beautiful’.” He thinks the adoration inhibited his development. “When you snap your fingers and you’ve got 10 chicks running after you, there’s no need to learn any social skills for dealing with the opposite sex.”

He says it took him until 1992 to finally rid himself of all the demons, horror and memories that had plagued him since Death in Venice. The memories naturally remain, but he is no longer frightened by them. 

As the directors of the documentary claim in their film, "He had the feeling of being used. He was packaged as an object." He allowed the directors of that documentary to follow him for six years and he is happy with the result. It made him feel that finally Tadzio was dead.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/jul/15/death-in-venice-screwed-my-life-tragic-visconti-beautiful-boy-bjorn-andresen