Understated lead and character player in films by virtually every major postwar Swedish director, particularly Ingmar Bergman. Bjornstrand appeared in more than 15 Bergman films between "It Rains On Our Love" (1946) and "Fanny and Alexander" (1982); the collaboration peaked in the mid-1950s with Bjornstrand playing elder gentlemen opposite various younger women in "Secrets of Woman" (1952), "Dreams" and "Smiles of a Summer Night" (both 1955). He was a classmate of Ingrid Bergman at Stockholm's famed Royal Dramatic Theater School.