Actor who was considered 'most beautiful boy in the world' dies aged 70
Topics: World News, Film and TV, Music, Celebrity
Liv Bridge
Featured Image Credit: Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images
Topics: World News, Film and TV, Music, Celebrity
An actor once dubbed the 'most beautiful boy in the world' has died at age 70.
The Stockholm-born actor and musician Björn Andrésen, best known for his role in the 1971 movie Death in Venice, tragically passed away over the weekend, it was confirmed on Sunday (October 26) by Swedish media.
Kristian Petri and Kristina Lindström, co-directors of the 2021 documentary, The Most Beautiful Boy in the World, announced he had died on Saturday (October 25) while paying tribute to him as a 'brave person.'
His cause of death has not yet been publicly disclosed, but he leaves behind his daughter, Robine, now 41, and two granddaughters.
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Andrésen shot to global stardom at 15 when he starred in Luchino Visconti’s film adaptation of German author Thomas Mann's 1912 novella of the same name.
Born on January 26 1955, Andrésen had a rocky childhood following his mother's death by suicide when he was just 10 years old.
In the absence of his father, the young boy was raised by his grandmother, whom he later said encouraged him into modelling work and acting because he said she 'wanted a celebrity in the family.'
His role in Death in Venice, where a 15-year-old Andrésen played Tadzio, who becomes a figure of obsession for the older man Gustav von Aschenbach (Dirk Bogarde), turned his life upside down, making him an international star overnight, including in Japan, after which he was thrust into the spotlight, marvelled at, and objectified by a humongous following he never asked for.
At the film's premiere, Visconti would refer to him as ‘the most beautiful boy in the world’, a nickname which Andrésen would take issue with throughout his life.
Speaking to The Guardian in 2003, Andrésen said he felt like 'an exotic animal in a cage' while years later, he said Visconti's film 'screwed up my life quite decently'.
"You’ve seen the pictures of The Beatles in America?” he told the outlet, referring to the 'Beatlemania' of the 1960s. “It was like that. There was a hysteria about it.”
When he was 16, he claimed the Italian director took him to a gay nightclub with a group of men, which he said made him feel 'very uncomfortable'.
"I knew I couldn’t react. It would have been social suicide. But it was the first of many such encounters,” Andrésen said, adding that he would have told the director to 'f*** off' if he were still alive.
He further claimed that Visconti 'didn't give a f**k about his feelings' and 'would sacrifice anything or anyone for the work'.
As his career continued, he said that his part in Death in Venice followed him throughout, as he said in 2021: "Everything I ever do will be associated with that film. I mean, we’re still sitting here talking about it 50 years later."
He found his passion in music, becoming an accomplished pianist, though he continued to take on commercials and to act in more than 30 movies and TV series throughout his life.
"My career is one of the few that started at the absolute top and then worked its way down," he said. “That was lonely."
Tragedy sadly continued to follow him, as Andrésen lost his nine-month-old son, Elvin, with his then-wife, Suzanna Roman, to sudden infant death syndrome in 1986.
He fell into a long depression following the tragedy, but believed they would be reunited again 'in the afterlife.'
More recently, he made a grand return to the big screen in 2019, playing a minor role in Ari Aster's folk horror movie, Midsommar, which he rejoiced as 'every boy's dream to die in a horror film,' as per The Mirror.