Hollywood period: 1938-1949
After completing one last film in Sweden and appearing in three moderately successful films in the
United States, Bergman joined
Humphrey Bogart in the 1942 classic film
Casablanca, which remains her best known role. Bergman did not consider
Casablanca to be one of her favorite performances. "I made so many films which were more important, but the only one people ever want to talk about is that one with Bogart." About Bogart, she said "I never really knew him. I kissed him, but I didn't know him."
That same year, she received her first Academy Award nomination for
Best Actress for
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), which was also her first color film. The following year, she won the
Academy Award for Best Actress for
Gaslight (1944). After losing to Ingrid Bergman for the 1944 Best Actress Academy Award,
Barbara Stanwyck told the press she was a "member of The Ingrid Bergman Fan Club", "I don't feel at all bad about the Award because my favorite actress won it and has earned it by all her performances."
She received a third consecutive nomination for Best Actress with her performance as a nun in
The Bells of St. Mary's (1945). Bergman had been considered for the role of Mother Maria-Veronica in 1944's
The Keys of the Kingdom, but the part ultimately went to Rose Stradner, who was then the wife of the film's producer,
Joseph Mankiewicz.
Later, she would receive another Best Actress nomination for
Joan of Arc (1948), an independent film produced by
Walter Wanger and initially released through
RKO. Bergman had championed the role since her arrival in Hollywood, which is one of the reasons she had played it on the Broadway stage in
Maxwell Anderson's
Joan of Lorraine. Partly because of the scandal with Rossellini, the film, based on the Anderson play, was not a big hit, and received disastrous reviews. It was subsequently shorn of 45 minutes, and it was not until its restoration to full length in 1998 and its 2004 appearance on
DVD that later audiences could see it as it was intended to be shown.
Bergman starred in the
Alfred Hitchcock films
Spellbound (1945),
Notorious (1946), and
Under Capricorn (1949). Unlike her earlier Hitchcock films,
Under Capricorn was a slow-paced costume drama, slow to such a degree that Bergman's reputation and the film's release suffered from this, in addition to the gathering adverse publicity over Bergman's affair with Rossellini. Ingrid Bergman was a student of the acting coach
Michael Chekhov during the 1940s. Coincidentally, it was his role in
Spellbound, of which she was a star, that he received his only nomination for an Academy Award.
Between motion pictures, Bergman appeared in the stage plays
Liliom,
Anna Christie, and
Joan of Lorraine. Furthermore, during a press conference in Washington, D.C. for the promotion of
Joan of Lorraine, she protested against segregation after seeing it first hand at the theater she was acting in. This led to a lot of publicity and some hate mail.
Ingrid Bergman went to Alaska during World War II in order to entertain troops. Soon after the war ended, she also went to Europe for the same purpose, where she was able to see the devastation caused by the war. It was during this time that she began a relationship with the famous photographer
Robert Capa. She became a smoker after needing to smoke for her role in
Arch of Triumph.