
Maximilian Schell (8 December 1930 – 1 February 2014) was a Swiss actor. Born in Austria, his parents were involved in the arts and he grew up surrounded by performance and literature. While he was still a child, his family fled to Switzerland in 1938 when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany, and they settled in Zürich. After World War II ended, Schell took up acting and directing full-time. Schell won the Academy Award for Best Actor for playing a lawyer in the legal drama Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). He was Oscar-nominated for playing a character with multiple identities in The Man in the Glass Booth (1975) and for playing a man resisting Nazism in Julia (1977). Fluent in both English and German, Schell earned top billing in a number of Nazi-era themed films. He acted in films such as Topkapi (1964), The Deadly Affair (1967), Counterpoint (1968), Simón Bolívar (1969), The Odessa File (1974), A Bridge Too Far (1977), and Deep Impact (1998). On television, he received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations for the NBC film Miss Rose White and the HBO television film Stalin (1992), the later of which earned him the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film. He also portrayed Otto Frank in the TV film The Diary of Anne Frank (1980), the Russian emperor Peter the Great in the NBC series Peter the Great (1986), Frederick the Great in the British series Young Catherine (1991), and Brother Jean le Maistre in the miniseries Joan of Arc (1999). Schell also performed in a number of stage plays, including a celebrated performance as Prince Hamlet. Schell was an accomplished pianist and conductor, performing with Claudio Abbado and Leonard Bernstein, and with orchestras in Berlin and Vienna. His elder sister was the internationally noted actress Maria Schell; he produced the documentary tribute My Sister Maria in 2002. Description above from the Wikipedia article Maximilian Schell, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Titles counted once; a person can act and direct on the same film (roles merged).
149
Acting credits
8
Directing
6
Writing
8
Other crew
Highest TMDB score (min 100 votes)
Judgment at Nuremberg
1961 · movie · as Hans Rolfe
A Bridge Too Far
1977 · movie · as General der Waffen-SS Wilhelm Bittrich
Cross of Iron
1977 · movie · as Hauptmann Stransky
The Young Lions
1958 · movie · as Capt. Hardenberg
The Odessa File
1974 · movie · as Eduard Roschmann
The Brothers Bloom
2008 · movie · as Diamond Dog
Julia
1977 · movie · as Johann
Little Odessa
1994 · movie · as Arkady Shapira
Highest TMDB vote count (attention / reach proxy; not box office)
Deep Impact
1998 · movie
Vampires
1998 · movie
Judgment at Nuremberg
1961 · movie
A Bridge Too Far
1977 · movie
The Brothers Bloom
2008 · movie
The Black Hole
1979 · movie
Cross of Iron
1977 · movie
The Freshman
1990 · movie
By release / first air year · movie & TV merged
Avalanche Express
movie · as Colonel Nikolai Bunin · ★ 4.8
Bavarian Film Awards
tv · as Self
NDR Talk Show
tv · as Self · ★ 6.6
Players
movie · as Marco · ★ 4.9
Tales from the Vienna Woods
movie · as Theatre Visitor, Writer, Producer, Director · ★ 6.1
The Black Hole
movie · as Dr. Hans Reinhardt · ★ 5.8
Together?
movie · as Giovanni · ★ 5.2