Zetterling was born in Västerås, Västmanland, Sweden to a working class family. She started her career as an actress by the age of seventeen at Dramaten, the Swedish national theater. Her breakthrough came in the 1944 film Hets ("Torment"), written by Ingmar Bergman.

Zetterling was involved in films in six different decades, from the 1940s to the 1990s. Her films as an actress included Quartet (1948), The Romantic Age (1949), and Only Two Can Play (1962), and the The Witches (1990), an adaptation of Roald Dahl's book. Her last film role was in the Swedish movie Morfars resa ("Grandpa's Journey") in 1993.

She began directing in the early 1960s, starting with political documentaries and a short film. Her first feature film was in 1964, Älskade par ("Loving Couples"), among several of her films controversial for their frank sexuality. A partial filmography as director:

• Älskade par (1964, "Loving Couples") - banned at the Cannes Film Festival.
• Nattlek (1966, "Night Games") - banned at the Venice Film Festival.
• Flickorna (1968, "The Girls") - a feminist rumination on Aristophanes' classical antiwar play Lysistrata, with Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson and Gunnel Lindblom.
• Visions of Eight (1973) - segment "The Strongest".

In 1985 she published an autobiography, All Those Tomorrows. She died in London, England, from cancer on St. Patrick's Day in 1994, at the age of 68.

References

External links

• Mai Zetterling at the Internet Movie Database
• Mai Zetterling at Turner Classic Movies

In Swedish

• Mai Zetterling at Svenska Wikipedia
• Zetterling, Mai at Nationalencyklopedins Internettjänst