Fears are growing for award-winning Swedish actor Per Oscarsson and his wife after human remains were found in his house, which burnt down on Friday. The remains of one person found in the ashes are likely to be either that of the 83-year-old star or his 67-year-old wife, Kia Ostling, police said. Both have been missing since the fire in south-western Sweden on Friday. Oscarsson won best actor at Cannes in 1966 and has appeared in films based on Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy. The house, in a remote area outside the small town of Skara, was completely destroyed, with only the chimney left when firefighters arrived at the scene. The cause of the fire is not known.
“Remains have been found, but we do not of whom,” Jan Strannegaard, a police spokesperson, told AFP news agency. Relatives said the couple were believed to have been in the house at the time of the fire, and no-one has reported hearing from either of them since. Mr Strannegaard said they had discovered the remains at noon on Sunday, but would keep looking to see if there were any other bodies. “We will keep looking for the other one today, and if we don’t finish today, we will continue tomorrow,” Mr Strannegaard said. Tributes have already begun to flood in for Oscarsson, who had appeared in more than 100 Swedish films and TV series. In 1966, he was awarded Best Actor at the Cannes film festival for his lead role in Henning Carlsen’s Hunger, an adaptation of the novel by Norwegian Nobel Literature laureate Knut Hamsun. He also appeared in the Swedish film, The Girl Who Played With Fire, based on Larsson’s popular book. He played Holger Palmgren, the legal guardian to the heroine, Lisabeth Salander. – BBC
