Agneta Ekmanner, ‘Hugs and Kisses’ Star, Dies at 87

By Daniel Okafor

Agneta Ekmanner, the Swedish actor who won the Bodil Award for Best Actress in Denmark (a Danish film prize) for ‘Hugs and Kisses,’ died in November at 87 after a six-decade career.

She completed more than 50 film and television roles. Her career covered stage, screen and radio, running from the bold new wave of 1960s Swedish cinema to later work at the Royal Dramatic Theatre. She brought warmth, curiosity and quiet strength to the work.

Where did Ekmanner begin?

Ekmanner was born on December 4, 1938, in Stockholm. Her father, Sten Ekmanner, was a dentist. Her mother was Birgit Essén. Her grandfather Rutger Essén was a diplomat.

At Lund University, she studied political science and history before discovering her passion for acting with the Lund Student Theatre in the years 1963 and 1964. From 1965 to 1968, she trained at Malmö Theatre Academy in a class that also included Claire Wikholm and Thomas Hellberg.

Her route from a Lund student stage to Stockholm’s Royal Dramatic Theatre unfolded like a rail timetable, one appointment after another.

What made ‘Hugs and Kisses’ matter?

In 1965, Ekmanner married director Jonas Cornell and made her screen debut in ‘Love 65.’ Two years later, she starred in Cornell’s ‘Hugs and Kisses,’ alongside Sven-Bertil Taube and Håkan Serner.

The role helped make her one of the faces of modern Swedish cinema and earned Ekmanner the Bodil Award for Best Actress in Denmark for that performance.

Her subsequent screen credits included:

• ‘The Corridor’
• Susan Sontag’s ‘Duet for Cannibals’
• ‘Dear Irene’
• ‘Per’
• Gunnel Lindblom’s ‘Summer Paradise’

She later appeared in:

• Suzanne Osten’s ‘The Mozart Brothers’
• ‘Lethal Film’
• ‘Svart Lucia’
• ‘White Water Fury’

She also joined four acclaimed Martin Beck mysteries:

• ‘Roseanna’
• ‘Murder at the Savoy’
• ‘The Fire Engine That Disappeared’
• ‘The Police Murderer’

In 1997, she appeared in Ingmar Bergman’s ‘In the Presence of a Clown,’ and in 1999 she starred in ‘The Honour of the House.’

How did she use television?

Her interest in ideas and current affairs made her a natural for television debate, and she hosted ‘Eftersnack’ in 1970, ‘That’s Life’ in 1977 and ‘The Night Owl’ in 1978.

In 2006, she guest-hosted Sveriges Radio P1’s summer talk series ‘Sommar,’ sharing her life story with listeners across Sweden.

Why did theatre remain central?

The stage remained the heart of her career. Her membership in the Stockholm City Theatre lasted until 2007.

She performed at the Royal Dramatic Theatre from 1989 to 2006, working with the country’s leading directors and actors while continuing to build a screen career in parallel.

These were not interludes between films. Ekmanner continued to work on stage while taking screen and television roles, and her two Stockholm theatres anchored a career that otherwise moved among film sets, studios and radio.

What did Cornell mean to Ekmanner?

Ekmanner and Cornell shared a creative and personal partnership for more than 55 years, until his death in 2022. Together they raised two children.

Their alliance began in 1965 with marriage and Ekmanner’s first film role, then placed them together as director and star on ‘Hugs and Kisses’ two years later.

The Bodil supplies the headline. Television debate, a radio life story, four Martin Beck mysteries and decades on Swedish stages supply the longer record. Ekmanner and Cornell’s two children now hold the personal history of a partnership measured in decades, not prizes.