“It was a cool summer job”. That was how the actor Björn Andrésen, who has died aged 70, described the role that made him a star and ruined his life.
In Luchino Visconti’s 1971 film of Thomas Mann’s novella Death in Venice, Andrésen was Tadzio, the angelic 14-year-old holidaying with his family at the same hotel as Gustav von Aschenbach, an ailing composer who is fleetingly revived and energised by his obsession with the boy.
