THE GUARDIAN: Actor who also starred in Midsommar and became a musician was nicknamed ‘the most beautiful boy in the world’ – a title he struggled with all his life
Björn Andrésen, the Swedish actor best known for his breakout role in the 1971 film Death in Venice, has died aged 70.
At 15, Andrésen was cast in Italian director Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice, based on Thomas Mann’s novella, in which he played Tadzio, a beautiful boy with whom an older man, played by Dirk Bogarde, becomes obsessed.
Visconti called Andrésen “the most beautiful boy in the world” in the press, a title which stuck – much to the dismay of Andrésen, who would later speak of how his negative experience working with Visconti affected the rest of his life.
“I felt like an exotic animal in a cage,” he told the Guardian in 2003. Making the film had, he said in 2021, “screwed up my life quite decently”.
Andrésen’s death was announced on Sunday by Kristian Petri and Kristina Lindström, the co-directors of The Most Beautiful Boy in the World, a 2021 documentary about the actor.
Petri told Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter that Andrésen died on Saturday, while Lindström remembered him as “a brave person.” No cause of death was given. » | Sian Cain | Monday, October 27, 2025
‘Death in Venice screwed up my life’ – the tragic story of Visconti’s ‘beautiful boy’: Björn Andrésen was the striking child star of the classic film, the perfect embodiment of youthful beauty. Fifty years on, he is still haunted by the exploitation that continued long after filming »
