Capable in roles ranging from stolid, contemplative protagonists to sardonic artists and menacing, often gleeful villains, von Sydow was best known for playing the 14th-century knight Antonius Block in Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal" (1957), which features iconic scenes of his character challenging Death to a game of chess. He appeared in a total of eleven films directed by Bergman, among which were "The Virgin Spring" (1960) and "Through a Glass Darkly" (1961), both winners of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He starred in a third winner, Bille August's "Pelle the Conqueror" (1987), a quarter-century later.