Oscar winner Maximilian Schell dies aged 83

VIENNA (Reuters) – Aus-trian actor Maximilian Schell, who won an Academy Award for his role as a German defence attorney in the acclaimed 1961 courtroom drama Judgment at Nurem-berg, has died at age 83.

Maximilian Schell
Maximilian Schell

The Vienna-born actor died overnight at a clinic in Innsbruck as the result of a “sudden and serious illness”, his agent, Patricia Baumbauer, told the Austria Press Agency yesterday.

One of the best known foreign actors in US films, Schell starred on stage and screen on both sides of the Atlantic after growing up in Switzerland, where his family settled to escape the Nazis after Germany’s 1938 annexation of Austria.

The brother of actress Maria Schell, he also won a Golden Globe and New York Film Critics Circle award for his role in Judgment at Nuremberg, which followed a television drama version of the play.