The grandson of the legendary Casablanca actress Ingrid Bergman is speaking out this week to reveal how she “inspired” him, saying that she was “something special.”
In an interview with Closer Weekly, Justin Daly recalled a visit to New York City as a child, when his grandmother Bergman took him to a toy store.
“She told me: ‘You can have anything you want.’ I was so excited,” he said. “I chose this plastic gorilla, about two feet high. I remember her laughing.”
Though fans remember Bergman as an iconic movie star, Daly knew her as “Mormor,” which is Swedish for grandmother.
“I knew there was something special about her,” he remembered. “But she was also very down-to-earth.”
Daly, who is the 48 year-old son of Bergman’s daughter Pia Lindström, visited Bergman often in her final years.
“She lived in Chelsea in what seemed a modest house,” he recalled. “She had several floors but it wasn’t palatial.”
Bergman, a three-time Oscar winner, kept her acting awards in a corner of her living room.
“It wasn’t the center of the room, just a table in the corner where she displayed theTony Award, the Oscars, Emmys, BAFTA Awards and more,” Daly recalled. “She was proud of her work.”
Regardless of how busy she was with her acting career, Bergman always made a point of spending Christmas with her family.
“My mother would do a Swedish Christmas,” Daly said. “Everyone, including my grandmother, would get up and dance around the dinner table.”
He would often receive postcards and recordings from his grandmother as well.
“She would start a conversation on a cassette,” he said. “I would record a response and mail it back to her.”
Daly was only 10 years-old when Bergman tragically passed away in 1982 after a battle with breast cancer. He has never forgotten attending her funeral.
“There were hundreds of photographers. We couldn’t get through and a camera hit me in the head. I started to cry, not because it hurt, but because I was frightened,” he remembered. “That’s when I realized that she wasn’t just my grandmother, she was a public figure.”
Bergman left a huge impression on Daly, inspiring him not only as a grandmother, but all also as an artist.
“She inspired me to become a director and continue her legacy,” he explained. Daly directed his first feature The Big Take in 2018, and he is currently working on his next movie Hide Out.
“She was more lucky in work than in love,” Daly said of his grandmother. “Her work was her one true love.”
This piece originally appeared in UpliftingToday.com and is used by permission.
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