Film director Bergman tells family secret

STOCKHOLM, Sweden – In a book to be published Monday, iconoclastic filmmaker Ingmar Bergman reveals a secret daughter he fathered 45 years ago, his publisher said.

Bergman, 86, who is widely considered one of cinema’s greatest directors, writes that he is the father of Maria von Rosen, whose mother Ingrid von Rosen married Bergman 12 years after the girl was born, Susanne Nystroem, a spokeswoman for Norstedt publishing house in Stockholm, said Friday.

Ingrid von Rosen was Bergman’s fifth and last wife, and Maria is the only child Bergman had with her. He had eight other children with his other wives and with actress Liv Ullmann, with whom he had a longtime affair.

The book – titled “Tre dagboecker,” or “Three Diaries” – consists of diary entries written by Bergman and Maria and Ingrid von Rosen around the time of Ingrid’s death from cancer in 1995 after a 24-year marriage to Bergman.

In the foreword, Bergman writes that he met Ingrid von Rosen in 1957 and had an on-and-off affair with her until 1969, according to excerpts published in Swedish newspapers.

During that period, Bergman went through two marriages, with Gun Grut and Kabi Laretei, and fathered a child with Ullmann.

Maria von Rosen was born in 1959, the same year Bergman divorced Grut and married Laretei. Bergman did not tell Maria he was her father until she was 22, he writes. Bergman wed Ingrid von Rosen in 1971, and she had a small role in his 1972 film “Cries and Whispers,” which starred Ullmann.