Biography
Nils Asther was a Danish-born Swedish actor. Born Nils Anton Alfhild Asther on 17 January 1897 in Copenhagen, he grew up in Malmö, Sweden, and trained at the Royal Dramatic Theater School in Stockholm before beginning his stage career.
He made his film debut in Sweden in 1916 and worked in Germany before moving to Hollywood in 1927. Asther appeared in over seventy feature films between 1916 and 1963, including sixteen silent pictures. He is noted for roles opposite Greta Garbo in Wild Orchids (1929) and The Single Standard (1929), and for playing the title character in Frank Capra’s The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933).
His Hollywood career declined after a blacklist in the mid-1930s; he worked in Britain before returning to the United States. Asther moved back to Sweden in 1958, where he continued occasional stage, film and television work until the early 1960s. He died in Stockholm on 13 October 1981.
