Harriet Andersson's acting career began in the music hall and in juvenile supporting roles in films, before Bergman cast her (aged 20) as the title character in Summer with Monika (1953): "apparently sluttish, shallow, and self-centered, the character is redeemed (both for Bergman and for the audience) partly by the film's graphic account of her squalid, miserable background, but more by her spontaneous, animal-like physicality" (Robin Wood). Bergman and Andersson continued an on-and-off-screen collaboration for another four films from 1952-55. It is these works which established her as a Bergman star: in them, "there is a common denominator to all her seemingly very diverse characterizations: sensuality" (Robin Wood). Since then, Andersson has divided her time between stage, television, and screen, including films with such directors as Mai Zetterling and Jörn Donner (whom she married). She has returned to work for Bergman on several occasions: as a schizophrenic in Through a Glass Darkly (1961); and harrowing as the dying Agnes in Cries and Whispers (1972). She also appeared as the kitchen maid, Justina, in Fanny and Alexander (1982), creating a "classic mad, spying, tattling enemy of children" (Pauline Kael).

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