Maria Schell and her brother Maximilian Schell.

Famous Austrian-born actor and director. Schell was born in Vienna, Austria, the son of Margarethe (née Noe von Nordberg), an actress who ran an acting school, and Hermann Ferdinand Schell, a Swiss poet, novelist, playwright, and pharmacy owner. His parents were Roman Catholic. Schell's father was never enthusiastic about young Maximilian becoming an actor like his mother, feeling that it could not lead to "real happiness". However, Schell was surrounded by acting in his early youth: I grew up in a theatre atmosphere and took it for granted. I remember the theatre, as a child, the way most people remember their mother's cooking. People acting was all around me, and so was poetry. I made my debut in the theatre at the age of three, in Vienna . . . The Schell family was forced to flee Vienna in 1938 to get "away from Hitler" after the Anschluss when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany. They resettled in Zurich, Switzerland. In Zurich, Schell "grew up reading the classics", and when he was ten, wrote his first play. Schell recalls that as a child, growing up surrounded by the theatre, he took acting for granted and did not want to become an actor at first: "What I wanted was to become a painter, a musician, or a playwright", like his father. Schell later attended the University of Zurich for a year, where he also played soccer and was on the rowing team, along with writing for newspapers as a part-time journalist for income. Following the end of World War II, he moved to Germany where he enrolled in the University of Munich and studied philosophy and art history. During breaks, he would sometimes return home to Zurich or stay at his family's farm in the country so he could write in seclusion: My father and my uncle hunt deer there, but I do not like to hunt. I like to walk through the forest by myself. In 1948 and 1949, when I wrote part of my first novel, which I have never shown to anyone, I isolated myself in one of the hunting cabins for three months, without a telephone, without electricity, with heat only from a large open fireplace. Schell then returned to Zurich, where he served in the Swiss Army for a year, after which he re-entered the University of Zurich for another year, and later, the University of Basel for six months. During that period, he acted professionally in small parts, in both classical and modern plays, and decided that he would from then on to devote his life to acting rather than to pursuing academic studies: I then decided, either you are a scientist or an artist. . . . To me it is much more important . . . to admire and feel and be stimulated and inspired. So as soon as I made up my mind, there was no sense anymore in continuing to study and in getting a degree. It is like an award; it does not mean anything in itself. . . . A university degree is just a title. I don't think an artist should have a title. It was time for me to concentrate on acting. Schell began acting at the Basel Theatre. Schell's late elder sister, Maria Schell, was also an actress, as were their two siblings, Carl (1927–2019) and Immaculata "Immy" Schell (1935–1992).