AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE — Ingrid Thulin, a leading actress in many Ingmar Bergman films including the classic Wild Strawberries, has died at the age of 77 after battling cancer, hospital officials said.

Much like her famed compatriot Greta Garbo, Thulin—who died on Wednesday—combined an aloof, mysterious demeanour with her own brand of Scandinavian melancholy. She was often listed as the best Swedish actress of all time, even ahead of the mysterious Garbo.

"She was undoubtedly one of the big Bergman women," film critic Nils-Petter Sundgren told Swedish news agency TT.

The blue-eyed and blonde former stage actress and dancer starred in eight Bergman films, making her first appearance on celluloid while she was still a student at Stockholm's Royal Dramatic Theatre in 1949.

A fisherman's daughter, Thulin was born on January 27, 1926 in the small town of Sollefteå in northern Sweden, according to the Swedish National Register, though Who's Who and several movie websites give her birthyear as 1929.

She soon moved to Stockholm, however, where she trained as a ballet dancer, and later shifted to theatre. She first met Bergman there, and worked with him in several stage productions.

It was her role in the bleak black and white Wild Strawberries in 1957 that first brought her fame.

She played Marianne, the estranged daughter-in-law of Isak Borg (played by director Victor Sjöström) who is re-evaluating his life while on his way to receive an honorary university degree. The film is now considered one of the best examples of European art house film of the 1950s.

A year later, she went on to play Max von Sydow's beautiful wife in Bergman's The Magician. She also shared best actress awards at the 1958 Cannes film festival with Bibi Andersson—her co-star in Wild Strawberries—and Eva Dahlbeck for their performances as pregnant women in Brink of Life.

The culmination of her career came with another Bergman film, the 1973 Cries and Whispers, in which she co-starred with Liv Ullmann and Harriet Andersson as the sister of a dying cancer patient. The film won an Oscar for best cinematography.

In addition to her performances in the Bergman films, Thulin will also be remembered for taking part in international productions.

She starred in Vincente Minnelli's remake of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962), in which her voice was dubbed by British actress Angela Lansbury, and in Luchino Visconti's The Damned (1969).

Thulin played her last movie part in 1990 as an elderly woman living in a nursing home who embarks on a love affair with a fellow patient in La Casa del Sorriso (House of Smile).

She married Swedish actor Claes Sylwander in 1952, but their marriage only lasted three years.

In 1956, she married Harry Schein, the co-founder of the Swedish Film Institute, and they stayed together for more than 30 years.

In the mid-60s, the couple moved to Italy, and Thulin stayed on there after their divorce in 1989.

Not too long ago, she returned to Sweden to receive special care at a cancer ward at the Karolinska hospital in Stockholm. She left the ward shortly before her death, and was cared for by friends and family at home.

Many of Thulin's friend's and colleagues voiced their grief and paid tribute to Thulin at the news of her death.

"It's bad news. No comment," Max von Sydow told Italian news agency Ansa on the set of a television series he is filming in Bologna.

"She was a wonderful actress and a close friend. I mourn her tremendously," Harriet Andersson told Swedish news Agency TT.

"She was extremely skilful, but so incredibly beautiful that people were tricked by her looks. They didn't always see her other sides. For instance, she had an incredible sense of humour," she added.