Ingrid Bergman (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈɪŋːrɪd ˈbærjman]; 29 August 1915 – 29 August 1982) was a Swedish actress who starred in a variety of European and American films. She won three Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards and the Tony Award for Best Actress. She is ranked as the Fourth greatest female star, out of 25, of American cinema of all time by the American Film Institute. She is best remembered for her roles as Ilsa Lund in Casablanca (1942), and as Alicia Huberman in Notorious (1946), an Alfred Hitchcock thriller starring Cary Grant.

Before becoming a star in American films, she had been a leading actress in Swedish films. Her first introduction to U.S. audiences came with her starring role in the English-language remake of Intermezzo (1939). In the United States, she brought to the screen a "Nordic freshness and vitality", along with exceptional beauty and intelligence, and according to the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, she quickly became "the ideal of American womanhood" and one of Hollywood's greatest leading actresses.^[4] Her producer David O. Selznick later called her "the most completely conscientious actress" he had ever worked with. He started her with a one-film role at her insistence (Intermezzo), then signed a four-film contract (also at her insistence) rather than a typical seven-year acting contract.

Casablanca (1942).After the onset of World War II, Bergman "felt guilty because she had so misjudged the situation in Germany" while she was there filming Die vier Gesellen (The Four Companions). According to one of her biographers, Charlotte Chandler (2007), she had at first considered the Nazis only a "temporary aberration, 'too foolish to be taken seriously.' She believed Germany would not start a war." Bergman felt that "The good people there would not permit it." Chandler adds, "Ingrid felt guilty all the rest of her life because when she was in Germany at the end of the war, she had been afraid to go with the others to witness the atrocities of the Nazi extermination camps.After completing one last film in Sweden and appearing in three moderately successful films (Adam Had Four Sons, Rage in Heaven and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, all 1941) in the United States, Bergman co-starred with Humphrey Bogart in the classic film Casablanca (1942), which remains her best-known role. In this film, she played the role of Ilsa, the beautiful Norwegian wife of Victor Laszlo, played by Paul Henreid, an "anti-Nazi underground hero" who is in Casablanca, a haven from the Nazis. Bergman did not consider Casablanca to be one of her favorite performances. "I made so many films which were more important, but the only one people ever want to talk about is that one with Bogart." In later years she stated, "I feel about Casablanca that it has a life of its own. There is something mystical about it. It seems to have filled a need, a need that was there before the film, a need that the film filled.⁸