The Al Mada publishing house released the Arabic translation of Changing, an autobiography written by one of the world’s most famous actresses, Liv Ullmann. In it, she recounts her Norwegian childhood, her life as a film star, and her relationship with the father of her child, Ingmar Bergman, the renowned director who turned her into a star.
In the book, one can sense Liv Ullmann’s guilt at not spending enough time with her daughter due to her commitment to her career and the long work hours.
The autobiography often shifts from past to present and from present to past in ways that can be confusing to the reader, but in the end, Liv Ullmann succeeds in telling her story.
Ullmann was only six years old when her father passed away. She says her father’s death a huge void. She remembered him as a tall man wearing a brown leather jacket.
Ulmann doesn’t recall in detail her relationship with Bergman, whom she had left her ex-husband for, in the book.
Bergman is known to have been involved in turbulent affairs with several of his actresses, including Bibi Andersson. Ullmann then lived with Bergman on Faroe, an island “between Russia and Sweden” with “fir trees of strange green colors, most of them stunted and bent to the ground. I don’t remember seeing a place so barren,” she says. For Bergman, solitude was heaven.
In hindsight, Ullman realized that life with Bergmann was a kind of trap. Even after they broke up, she kept trying “to do nothing so that I don’t get criticized - and thus give him every possible reason to do something.”
