Björn Andrésen died on Sunday at the age of 70, a fact confirmed by documentary filmmakers Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri to the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. Lindström and Petri had worked on the 2021 documentary “The Most Beautiful Boy in the World,” which explored Andrésen’s life. They did not disclose a cause of death.
Andrésen rose to international fame in 1971 at just 15, when he was positioned by director Luchino Visconti as the embodiment of beauty in the film Death in Venice. In this adaptation of Thomas Mann’s novella, he portrayed Tadzio, the Polish boy who becomes the object of obsession for the aging writer Gustav von Aschenbach.
Direct link | The documentary “The Most Beautiful Boy in the World” told Andrésen’s story in 2021
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Death in Venice was Andrésen’s second film, following his debut in A Swedish Love Story. He had been pushed into modeling and acting by his grandmother, who took him along to castings after his mother’s suicide, a detail he later recalled with a mix of gratitude and ambivalence.
Tadzio’s role as an “annoying shadow”
Throughout his life, Andrésen harbored a complicated relationship with the image that defined him as the “most beautiful boy in the world.” In a 2002 interview with Stern, he described Tadzio as not a trauma, but a bothersome shadow—an element of his life that, while it could be thrilling and interesting, also cast a persistent, intrusive pall over his experiences.
In other conversations, Andrésen was more critical of the exploitative sides of early fame. He recalled that Visconti—whom Andrésen once described as a “predator”—had once taken him to a gay club when he was only 16, an episode that underscored for him the dubious temptations and pressures that accompanied his sudden celebrity.
Big in Japan, small in Sweden
Andrésen eventually left for Japan, where he pursued singing and continued to build his career. In Japan, a fervent fanfare grew around him, a hype he likened to Beatlemania in the United States during the 1960s. Music, far more than acting for a long stretch, captivated him. He had trained at a music school before his acting break came.
By the 1980s, Andrésen had returned to his homeland and spent decades appearing in a variety of films and television series, including an appearance in Mankell’s Wallander, yet he never again reached the level of notoriety or the sustained fame that had followed him decades earlier.
In 2019, Andrésen experienced another significant moment on screen when he appeared in the acclaimed horror film Midsommar. He played the village elder of a secluded pagan commune who, overwhelmed by aging, ends his life by throwing himself from a cliff—an exit that left a lasting impression on audiences and critics alike.
Björn Andrésen is survived by his former wife Susanna Román and a daughter born in 1984. The couple also had a son who died in 1986 at nine months old from sudden infant death syndrome, after which they separated. (spot)
