Question: You have justly gained the reputation of being one of our busiest actresses. You have made nine films in three years and they have varied from satirical comedies to the penetrating human dramas—i.e. in Through a Glass, Darkly. What have you been doing during the past autumn? You started off by winning the best actress award at the Venice Festival for your part in Jörn Donner's To Love.

Answer: From there I went directly to New York with Jörn to show his film at the Lincoln Center festival.

Question: And after New York?

Answer: I went to Brazzaville in the Congo to play the female lead in The Vine Bridge.

Question: Sven Nykvist—Ingmar Bergman's famous cameraman—was directing his first feature film. Will you tell us something about the film and your part in it?

Answer: The main character is a doctor who works for WHO (the World Health Organization). He feels compelled to go to Africa and make his contribution because he is the son of a missionary and both of this parents died there. I play the part of his wife, a trained laboratory assistant, who is unable to help her husband in his work with insecticides. As I have conceived the part, she loves her husband in a very selfish manner and is dissatisfied with most things. One of her problems is that her marriage is childless. When her husband dies, she still decides to stay on and work in the cottage hospital. She has found a mission and finally succeeded in freeing herself from her own selfishness. It feels right that she stays on.

Question: Did you like Africa?

Answer: The little I saw of it I thought was fantastic. But I got mad at the African men because they're so lazy and let the women do all the work. They've got used to never having to do anything themselves. There is also a terrible shortage of work. Only one of ten is employed and it is common that 15 to 20 people live on the earnings of one person. I think the African women, who do everything that the men should do, should be helped. They are also brighter.

Question: You haven't been on a stage for several years. Are you satisfied with films as your medium of expression?

Answer: When I don't have anything to do and find the time to go to the theatre, I get a tremendous longing to get back on the stage. But I know that I can only stand appearing in the same play for a few months and it is impossible to make such demands. A commercial theatre wants to be able to run a box-office hit at least one year.

Question: Jörn Donner will make his third feature, The Adventure Started Here, in his birthplace, Helsinki (Finland) next summer. Will you play the lead just as you have done in his two previous features and what kind of film will it be?

Answer: Yes, I will, and this time it will also be a story about love—about a woman and a few men. Jörn calls it a melodrama and it deals with the conflict between private life and career.

Question: What are your plans for the future? Do you have any attractive foreign offers?

Answer: I have agents and I have received some offers, but nothing worth accepting. I suppose I will have to wait and not believe that the world's film directors will come running because I have received a prize.

Question: With which director would you be most anxious to make a film if you had the choice?

Answer: Fellini—I met him recently in Rome—that is to say I said "How do you do." He pulled me by the nose and kissed me on the cheek. He asked why I looked at him all the time. I replied that I had to see what the man who made the film, which I love almost most of all, looks like. I can't explain what it is that makes 8½ so wonderful or how he was able to make such a film. All that I can say is that I weep in my heart when I see it. Think of the ending when everything starts to move, everyone dances around the manège. Then I feel as if I would like to jump into the screen and take part and I think "Oh God, what a wonderful profession we actors have!"

Question: Do you have any other favourite film directors?

Answer: Truffaut, and then Clive Donner and the other young Englishmen. And Losey—what a skillful director! Not to mention Japanese films that are finally gaining a foothold in Sweden. Kurosawa is excellent and his favourite actor, Toshiro Mifune, is my great love. If I had the chance to make a film with him I would leave immediately for Japan.