Nils Asther

Nils Asther was a Swedish actor who built a Hollywood career that ran from 1926 into the mid-1950s and who was nicknamed the male Greta Garbo. Born in Copenhagen, he moved to Stockholm as a young man and took acting lessons from Augusta Lindberg, whose help led to his first stage engagement in Gothenburg and, in 1916, a role in Mauritz Stiller's The Wings. After film work in Sweden, Denmark and Germany, he went to Hollywood, where his looks made him a leading man by 1928, opposite stars such as Pola Negri, Marion Davies and Joan Crawford. His popular films included Our Dancing Daughters (1928) and Wild Orchids (1929), with Greta Garbo, and he played the title role in Frank Capra's The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1932). Forced to work in England from 1935 to 1940, he returned to smaller supporting parts, later tried television, and left acting in 1963 to paint.