©Courtesy of Warner Brothers

Swedish actor and musician Björn Andrésen died on October 25 at the age of 70. In 1971, the 15-year-old Andrésen garnered much critical acclaim for his breakout performance as Tadzio in Luchino Visconti’s film Death in Venice, a film adaptation of Thomas Mann’s 1912 novella. In the iconic film, Tadzio was obsessively pursued by an older man portrayed by Dirk Bogarde.

Described by Visconti as “the most beautiful boy In the world,” Andrésen, who was straight, expressed his discomfort when Visconti took the teenaged actor to a gay nightclub after the film’s release. In 2003, Andrésen told an interviewer that the experience made him feel “like an exotic animal in a cage.”

“The waiters at the club … looked at me uncompromisingly as if I was a nice meaty dish,” he added. “I knew I couldn’t react. It would have been social suicide. But it was the first of many such encounters.”

He complained that Visconti “didn’t give a fuck” about his feelings. “Luchino was the sort of cultural predator who would sacrifice anything or anyone for the work,” he declared.

Andrésen further expressed his disdain for Visconti in a 2021 interview with Variety, recalling how the Italian director had “posed me with one foot against the wall, I would never stand like that. When I watch it now, I see how that son of a bitch sexualized me,” he complained.

A pianist and musician who performed and toured regularly with the Sven Erics dance band, Andrésen became a pop-culture icon in Japan. Petri and Kristina Lindström’s documentary about his life, The Most Beautiful Boy in the World, premiered at Sundance in 2021, winning its World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize.

Andrésen suffered many tragedies during his life. His father died in an accident when Andrésen was young, and his mother committed suicide when he was 10. His own son, Elvin, died of sudden infant death syndrome when he was nine months old, sending the actor into a period of deep depression and alcohol abuse after it was reported that the drunken Andrésen was lying next to Elvin when he died.

Andrésen, who had been married to his ex-wife, the poet Susanna Roman, is survived by a daughter, Robine. No cause of death has been reported.

Check out other articles by Edward