Justus was a photographer and loved documenting his daughter’s birthdays with his camera. He made his daughter one of his favorite photographic subjects. She enjoyed dancing, dressing up, and acting in front of her father’s lenses. “I was perhaps the most photographed child in Scandinavia,” quipped Bergman in her later years. In 1929, when Bergman was around 14, her father died of stomach cancer. Losing her parents at such a young age was a trauma that Bergman later described as “living with an ache”, an experience of which she was not even aware.
After her father’s death, Bergman was sent to live with her paternal aunt, Ellen, who died of heart disease six months later. Bergman then lived with her paternal uncle Otto and his wife Hulda, who had five children of their own. She also visited her maternal aunt, Elsa Adler, whom the young girl called Mutti (Mom) according to family lore.: 294 She later said, “I have wanted to be an actress almost as long as I can remember”, sometimes wearing her deceased mother’s clothing, and staging plays in her father’s empty studio.
Bergman spoke Swedish and German as first languages, English and Italian (acquired later, while living in the U.S. and Italy), and French (learned in school). She acted in each of these languages at various times.
Bergman received a scholarship to the state-sponsored Royal Dramatic Training Academy, where Greta Garbo had some years earlier earned a similar scholarship. After several months, she was given a part in a new play, Ett Brott (A Crime), written by Sigfrid Siwertz. This was “totally against procedure” at the school, where girls were expected to complete three years of study before getting such acting roles.: During her first summer break, Bergman was hired by Swedish film studio Svensk Filmindustri, which led her to leave the Royal Dramatic Theatre after just one year to work in films full-time.