Actor Maximilan Schell Dead at 83

Austrian-born actor Maximilian Schell, a fugitive from Adolf Hitler who became a Hollywood favorite and won an Oscar for his role as a defense attorney in Stanley Kramer's classic Judgment at Nuremberg, has died. He was 83. Schell's agent said he died overnight at a hospital in the Austrian city of Innsbruck following a "sudden illness." Despite being type-cast for numerous Nazi-era films, Schell's acting performances in the mid-1970s won him renewed popular acclaim, earning him a best actor Oscar nomination for The Man in the Glass Booth and a supporting actor nomination for Julia.

Schell later worked as a producer and director, receiving further Oscar nods for Best Foreign Film for First Love and The Pedestrian. Perhaps Schell's most significant film as a director was his 1984 documentary on Marlene Dietrich, Marlene, which was nominated for a best documentary Oscar. Schell was also a highly successful concert pianist and conductor. Austrian Cabinet minister Josef Ostermayer described Schell as one of "the greatest actors in the German-speaking world," the Austria Press Agency reported. (More Maximilian Schell stories.)