Director Bergman reveals secret daughter

Iconoclastic filmmaker Ingmar Bergman reveals that he fathered a daughter outside of one of his five marriages, a secret he had kept for 45 years, in a new book.

Bergman, 86, who is widely considered one of cinema’s greatest directors, says in the book he is the father of Maria von Rosen, whose mother Ingrid von Rosen later married Bergman 12 years after the girl was born.

The book, which is co-authored by Bergman and Maria von Rosen, consists of their respective diary entries written around the time Ingrid von Rosen died of cancer in 1995, after a 24-year marriage to Bergman.

In the foreword to the book, Bergman writes that he met Ingrid von Rosen in 1957 and had an on-and-off affair with her until 1969. During that period, Bergman went through two marriages, with Gun Grut and Kabi Laretei. He also had an affair with actress Liv Ullmann.

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 married Ingrid von Rosen in 1971. He has been married five times, and has eight other children, including a daughter with Liv Ullmann.