The actor Björn Andrésen – who became known as “the world’s most beautiful boy” – has died, writes DN.
He was 70 years old.
– He was warm but determined, says friend Jonas Wester.
According to DN, the actor and musician Björn Andrésen passed away on Saturday, aged 70.
He broke through as a 15-year-old in the film “Death in Venice” in 1971. The Italian director Luchino Visconti then called him “the world’s most beautiful boy”.
His life became a movie
Andrésen’s life has been marred by a series of tragedies, which in 2021 was depicted in a documentary that was named “The World’s Most Beautiful Boy”.
The death is confirmed by director Kristian Petri, who made the documentary together with Kristina Lindström.
He calls Andrésen “a brave person”.
– Kristina and I had talked for a long time about wanting to make an entire feature film about Björn. The idea was for him to tell his story himself, and we talked to him for a whole year before we started filming. Then we filmed for several years – and it was both a fun and sometimes painful recording, says the director to DN.
“Thrown to the Wolves”
When Expressen’s Robert Börjesson met Björn Andrésen in 2021, in connection with the release of the documentary about the actor, he described how his life turned into a nightmare after the breakthrough in 1971. He told, among other things, how Luchino Visconti took him to a gay club with a group of men after the premiere of “Death in Venice”, about how he felt alone and “vomited” alcohol in order to shield yourself.
– I had no problems during the recording itself. But then when it was done then it felt like I was some kind of meat slurry that was thrown to the wolves somehow. Physically, nothing happened, but it was unpleasant as it was.
During a trip to Japan, when he was 16, he was told to take drugs to dare to sing in front of an audience.
Found a way out of addiction
He also grew up without his father, and his mother took her own life when he was ten years old. And in the 80s, his son died of sudden infant death syndrome – when he himself was lying drunk next to him.
After that, he fell into a long period of alcohol abuse and depression.
But then Björn Andrésen found a rescue: God and poems by Gunnar Ekelöf.
At the bar Älgen in Hornstull on Södermalm in Stockholm, where Björn Andrésen sometimes hung out and held gigs, friend Jonas Wester remembers a “warm but determined” man.
– It came as a shock. We haven’t seen him in the neighborhood for a while. Very sad, he says of the death.
– He was a figure, really. Everyone knew him, everyone greeted him.
