Maximilian Schell (8 December 1930 â€" 1 February 2014) was an
Austrian-born Swiss film and stage actor, who also wrote, directed and
produced some of his own films. He won the Academy Award for Best
Actor for the 1961 American film Judgment at Nuremberg, his second
acting role in Hollywood. Born in Austria, his parents were involved
in the arts and he grew up surrounded by acting and literature. While
he was a child, his family fled to Switzerland in 1938 when Austria
was annexed by Nazi Germany, and they settled in Zurich. After World
War II ended, Schell took up acting or directing full-time. He
appeared in numerous German films, often anti-war, before moving on to
Hollywood.Schell was top billed in a number of Nazi-era themed films,
as he could speak both English and German. Among those were two films
for which he received Oscar nominations: The Man in the Glass Booth
(1975; best actor), where he played a character with two identities,
and Julia (1977; best supporting actor), where he helps the
underground in Nazi Germany.His range of acting went beyond German
characters, however; and during his career, he also played
personalities as diverse as Venezuelan leader Simón Bolívar, Russian
emperor Peter the Great, and physicist Albert Einstein. For his role
as Vladimir Lenin in the television film Stalin (1992) he won the
Golden Globe Award. On stage, Schell acted in a number of plays, and
his was considered "one of the greatest Hamlets ever."[citation
needed]Schell was an accomplished pianist and conductor, performing
with Claudio Abbado and Leonard Bernstein, and with orchestras in
Berlin and Vienna. His elder sister, Maria Schell, was also a noted
Hollywood actress, about whom he produced the documentary My Sister
Maria, in 2002. Maximilian Schell Biography, NetWorth, Height, Age, Weight, Family, Married, Son, Daughter