Sven-Bertil Taube(1934-2022)

Iconic Swedish actor, singer and guitarist who briefly became an action star on the international scene. Sven-Bertil was born in Stockholm, one of four siblings of Baltic German ancestry, to songwriter and balladic troubadour Axel Evert Taube (1890-1976) and the sculptress Astrid Taube (1898-1980). He attended a boarding school in Darien, Connecticut, followed by further musical tutoring in his native Stockholm. Taube's prolific recording career began in 1954 with the release of his debut album (the first of many), entitled "Swedish folk songs & ballads". It included the rendition of a song composed by his father. Between 1959 and 1962, Taube also took on acting studies at Sweden's oldest and most distinguished theatrical school, the Royal Dramatic Training Academy. There, he made his first acting forays, often in Shakespearean roles. By mid-decade, he had graduated to playing male leads in Swedish film productions, opposite, among others, Agneta Ekmanner and Essy Persson. In 1969, Taube relocated to London where he was first featured on stage in a West End musical. He subsequently essayed Queen Victoria's ill-fated husband in "I and Albert" at the Piccadilly Theatre.

Taube's international film career took off with Narcotic Bureau (1971), a James Bond-style thriller (based on a 1969 novel by Alistair MacLean) in which he gave a solid account of himself as an action hero, playing the part of Dutch-born U.S. agent Paul Sherman on the track of a gang of murderous heroin dealers in Amsterdam. One of the film's highlights is a lengthy boat chase along the city canals which was said to have inspired the more famous pursuit sequence through the Louisiana bayous in Roger Moore's Vivre et laisser mourir (1973) two years later.

Taube's other international credits have ranged from adventure drama set in Africa (Le putsch des mercenaires (1979)) to horror (London Voodoo (2004)). He also played Michael Caine's second-in-command Hans von Neustadt in the excellent wartime thriller L'aigle s'est envolé (1976) (novel by Jack Higgins) and a concert guitarist acting as a courier of covert messages in the Cold War-set espionage series Codename: Kyril (1988). More recently, he had a notable role as wealthy patriarch Henrik Vanger, the guy who essentially gets the ball rolling in Millénium (2009). He also narrated the blood-soaked Scandinavian crusader epic Arn, chevalier du temple (2007). Taube was twice recipient of the prestigious Swedish Guldbagge (Golden Scarab) Award as best actor, respectively for Händerna (1994) and En enkel till Antibes (2011).

Taube was first diagnosed with age-related macular degeneration in 2005. His eyesight continued to deteriorate and by the time he retired from acting in 2017 he was almost blind. He died of natural causes on November 2022 in London.