Acting great Liv Ullman finally getting her own Oscar

Liv Ullmann likes to say that she’s given away many Oscars in her life. But she’s not talking about losing.

The great Norwegian actor was once a frequent presenter at the awards. She called Peter Finch’s name for his posthumous Oscar for “Network” and stood beside Roger Moore when Sacheen Littlefeather accepted the statuette for Marlon Brando.

So when she heard the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was trying to get in touch with her recently, she figured she was going to be asked to “give away” another. But David Rubin had better news for her: It was her turn to get one.

The award will be officially given to her at the Governors Awards in Los Angeles on Friday. Elaine May, Samuel L. Jackson and Danny Glover are also being feted with honorary Oscars.

“He really made it sound like I got my Oscar with that telephone conversation,” Ullmann, 83, said earlier this week from her part-time residence in Key Largo. “I felt I had just been congratulated with a beautiful life. I hung up the phone and thought, `Oh Liv, you are so lucky.”’

Ullmann was nominated for best actress twice, first for Jan Troell’s “The Emigrants” in 1971, in which she was up against Cicely Tyson (“Sounder”), Diana Ross (“Lady Sings the Blues”) and Liza Minnelli (“Cabaret”), who won. A few years later she and Ingmar Bergman were up for “Face to Face,” and she brought her and Bergman’s then-12-year-old daughter.

Neither won, which was fine by her. But after, she thought, “Oh the poor little one! Mommy and Daddy, they were losers,” she laughed.

Ullmann was born in Tokyo in 1938. Her Norwegian father was an engineer whose work took them around the globe. When she was 6 and they were living in New York, her father died after an accident with a propeller. She and her mother and sister soon moved back to Norway, where she was raised.

She got her start in theater and became quite famous for her turn as Nora in “A Doll’s House” in the 1950s. It drew the attention of Edith Carlmar, Norway’s first female director, who gave Ullmann her first film role.

“I was very innocent and she said, `You know it’s a wayward girl?”’ Ullmann said. “I was shy. And she said, `Are you a virgin?’ I couldn’t believe it. I got the part anyway. My family tried to stop me because they didn’t want me to be a wayward girl. But it was an incredible experience. She was a great teacher.”

But Ullmann became an international star when she started working with Bergman, a personal and professional collaboration that began with her breakout role in 1966’s “Persona.” Bergman wrote the film after a single encounter with her and her best friend Bibi Andersson (who had already been in several of his films). Though one of two leads, she has only one line in the film as a stage actress who has stopped speaking. She said she understood that in some ways Bergman wrote her character with himself in mind.

“I did a lot of talking for Ingmar,” she said. “We never discussed it. And I may be wrong, but I don’t think I’m wrong.”

All told, she acted in 10 of his movies.