Liv Ullmann Books

This is a reflective autobiography by one of the world's quality actresses.She also it would seem if her charity work is an indication,a fine human being. In this work Liv Ullman tells of her Norwegian childhood and her present life as 'star of stage and screen'. Her relationship with the father of her child, and also her director in her greatest roles, Ingmar Bergman is part of this work. In one important sense it seems however that the central relationship in the work is between Ullmann and her daughter Linn. Ullmann has a certain guilt that her career has meant giving at times less time to her daughter.
Ullmann very often goes from past to present from present to past in ways which can be confusing. But her fundamental story is told clearly.
Here is one of her central summary statements towards the end of the book.
" I am a woman- a single career woman with a child.
My life has been filled with all a human being can expect- and much more.
I have loved and been loved. I have known pain and sorrow, but also happiness far greater than I ever dreamed of as a young girl.
I have never been hungry: only at certain times did I have to count my money to see whether I could afford butter instead of margarine.
Sometimes I am happy and wake up in the morning an smile at a man I have the peace to love.
I am constantly living in a state of change, although deep inside I am a "young girl who refuses to die."
We who are alive at this moment are only an infinitesimal part of something that has existed for eternity and will continue when there is no longer anything to show that earth existed.
Still we must feel and believe that we are all.
That is our responsibility - not only to ourselves but to everything and everyone with which we share our time here.
What is change?
Is it something that happens inside me?Or is it something I experience in other people?
What I am striving for?
To become the best possible human being? Or the best artist?
What do I really want to do with what I have achieved?
What will I do with change?
Maybe it isn't so important to know
Maybe it's isn't so important to arrive. "
A thoughtful work a grade above the usual star autobiography.

Sometimes it is hard to comprehend, but it does; life goes on. "Changing" is an autobiography of a woman who learns to balance her life out in all the roles and lives life to its best capability as she deals with the change that time brings in her. It is about being a young woman, being a middle aged person, and consciously realizing the growth time brings around in an individual.

The book is arranged in alternate chapters of Liv Ulman's life - before her achieving her success and after achieving the fame and recognition as an actress. It takes a while to grasp but once you realize it, it is an amazing read mainly due to the way she expresses herself. Her candid style finds the reader connecting to her sooner than they realize as she goes through similar sort of daily struggles as a mother, a wife, a working woman, as any modern woman does. She talks of her insecurities as an actress, as a mother, and later as the ex-wife. "Changing" is an effort to move on with time and accept the change in self.

A very highly recommended autobiographical read for anyone who has ever felt insecure in their relationships at some point in their lives. (Still wondering why this book went out of print!!!)

There isn't another autobiography quite like Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann's first one, "Changing." It's an enigmatic title for a book that isn't meant to be read so much as unwrapped. Though at first it's rather confusing and hard to understand, by the halfway point Ullmann's delicate sensitivity is fully revealed.

Ullman describes (in alternating chapters) her life as a wealthy but unfulfilled star, and her childhood in Norway. It describes the collapse of her marriages, her love affair with reknowned director Ingmar Bergman, and the experiences of moviemaking and the life that surrounds it -- both the life of a star, and the life of a woman, a mother, and an artist.

The first third or so of "Changing" is incredibly difficult to read. It seems like Ullmann is picking more or less random incidents in her life and stringing them together out of chronological order. Some of the stuff, like anecdotes about her daughter Linn, feels unfinished, and it takes awhile to really understand what is going on.

But about halfway through the book, the picture starts to paint itself. Ullman's past and present link themselves together more fully, and you can start to appreciate the delicacy of her storytelling. She spends relatively little time focusing on the glamour of her profession. Most of those anecdotes are a blur. Instead, there are anecdotes about her struggle to finish her book, her guilt at leaving her daughter with nannies, how she acted, a walk in the rain with her daughter, her affection for the men in her life, and what she sees in people around her. Good, bad, sad, happy -- Ullmann seems to see it all.

Any woman called a muse (as Ullmann once was for Bergman) might find it difficult to stay humble. But Ullman manages it. She doesn't really describe herself so much as let the anecdotes describe her. Most of the time she seemed rather wistful and a bit lonely as she looked back over her life.

"Changing" seems like an appropriate title for a book about this actress's life in various stages. Ullman's biography is a deceptively simple, beautiful read from a unique woman.

This book is in a class by itself. One of the extraordinary things about Liv Ullman's autobiography is how little it depends upon the author's celebrity for its power. Yes, she did write it herself, and yes, she writes very well.

Ullman's reflections belong to the body of literature by women about the delicate and complex business of being at once an artist, mother, lover, thinker, creator of magic, and wiper-up of spills. By saying so much in so few words and with so great a respect for the privacy of other people, Ullman reminds us that it is possible for writers to explore their own lives in print without betraying the trust of friends and lovers.

As an artist and a woman, Ullman is most deeply concerned with the process of shedding roles defined by others and becoming what she calls "one's best or truest self." In her view, the real woman is not one who plays roles thrust upon her by others.

Although talented, beautiful, successful and rich, she struggles to achieve an equalibrium between her responsibilities to herself and her obligations to others and is like most women who have refused to settle for one role in life. Her inner turmoil is tempered by a sense of humor and the realization that she is more privileged than most.

She returns to the subject of maternal guilt again and again and the concept is usually translated from the Norwegian as "bad conscience."

"Changing" is filled with compassion for the ways in which both men and women have been limited by traditional views of masculinity and femininity. Her view of relations between the sexes belongs to a feminist ethos that insists the liberation of women will also free men; it is totally at variance with the wing of the feminist movement that suggests women cannot be free until they are free of men.

This is Liv Ullmann in her own words: mother, friend, international movie star, myth, muse.

In a candid, honest, totally devoid of adornment way, Miss Ullmann tells how it was when she started out, how she met Ingmar Bergman, how precious her child is to her and how she found a sense of self as a woman, an artist and a human being.

Disarming and beautiful, it is one of the best autobiographies read in a long time.

I was looking for something for my grandchildren who live 1500 miles from us when this beautiful book "jumped off the shelf". These letters contain all kinds of things I am able to teach the grandchildren who live close by and visit often, but it will also be nice for them to have something in their hands for future reference. The lessons that these well known people give to their grandchildren as well as our own speak of values we all want for the world. Such a simple thing as writing down the way we try to live will surely speak loud and clear to children (and parents) everywhere now and in the future.

This book is excellent! It contains big photos of children of many places all around the world. It brings out a lot of emotions.

This is the second autobiographical book by Ullmann. It opens with an account of her work in the Broadway Musical 'Mama', and continues to document both her acting career and her private life. It also tells much about her humanitarian efforts and travels in which she reveals a great deal of sympathy for and extends help to the poor and non- privileged in a wide variety of places. She also tells of her relationship to her young daughter, and there are accounts of her love- affairs one central one being with a man called Abel. She reveals herself to be a very caring kind of public personality, one who uses her fame for doing good for others.
I found the book a bit of a choppy read without much narrative drive. Nonetheless it is difficult not to be impressed by her strong caring personality and her dedication to helping others.

The second autobiography by Liv Ullmann may be even better than the first, "Changing." This one, "Choices," is a more deeply personal memoir and tugs a lot more at the heartstrings, with tales of her roles as mother and lover, and her work for the poor.

Ullmann describes in quiet detail her work for UNICEF, travelling to places like Haiti and Manila. She also describes her relationship with her teenage daughter Linn, who blossoms from a sullen kid to a young woman; and an affair with a man she calls Abel, who moves to be with her, but whose love for her isn't enough. She describes working in the theatre. And finally, the then-forty-year-old Ullmann reflects on life, on time gone by, and the people she cares about.

Ullmann is older and wiser in "Choices." Hollywood was a thing of the past, although she was still acting at the time this was written. This isn't so much an actor's biography as the biography of a kind, charitable woman whose heart seems to bleed for every starved child and crippled old person she meets around the world. The only detailed writing in the whole book (aside from nature descriptions) is how she describes the lost, forgotten people who can't get medical care, food or water.

"Choices" is also endowed with the sort of in-the-moment anecdotes, that makes you feel like Ullmann is handing out snapshots of her life -- her breakups, her safari with her young daughter, her work on an Ibsen play, and even how a rusty old wok hinted at a future breakup. She takes some looks backward in time as well, at her mother and grandmother, and at her daughter's time with her father.

"But within this framework I have choices, and I am described by the way I make or neglect them." So says Ullmann, with the certainty of a woman who has made her "Choices."