Bergman retiring

Bergman said his 2002 production of Henrik Ibsen's Ghost at Sweden's Royal Dramatic Theatre would be his last. 'After Ghost I decided that this must be it. I do not want them to carry me out of the theatre. I'm leaving by myself,' he said in an interview with the newspaper Dagens Nyheter. 'Nobody will need to say, "Now the old man has to quit."'

The film icon, who won three Oscars in the best foreign film category, the last in 1984 for Fanny and Alexander, also said that his heart remains with theatre. 'Theatre is the beginning and end and actually everything, while cinema belongs to the whoring and slaughterhouse trade,' Bergman told the newspaper.