- Although she played Victor Sjöström's mother in Wild Strawberries (1957), she was eleven years his junior in real life.
- In 1937 Swedish stage director Per Lindberg cast her as Mother Peachum in Bertolt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera (in Swe: Tolvskillingsoperan) which became a hugely successful production and toured with Riksteatern.
- She was part of Bergman's ensemble (1954-1961) during all his legendary years at Malmö City Theatre.
- Wifstrand did not have her mind set on acting, instead she sought to be a singer. And it was as a grand operetta singer she became famous and enjoyed a much successful star career for 30 years in Sweden (her speaking parts as an actress came long after; when she after singing-career gradually turned to acting in the 1940s and then earned acclaim as one of Sweden's finest supporting and character actresses on stage and film).
- Wifstrand never trained acting but learned the art thoroughly when she in 1905 joined the Anna Lundberg Theatre Company, a well reputed and respected theatre company in Sweden at the time. She travelled with them for a number of years, appearing in small parts and in extra parts. This eventually led her to small parts at theatres in Helsinki and around Stockholm.
- Naima Wifstrand was married to captain Erling Nielsen from 1921 to 1928.
- Aside from filming she also worked with the new established Stockholm City Theatre 1962-1963 and at Gothenburg City Theatre from 1964.
- Wifstrand studied music and singing in Stockholm at the Swedish Royal Academy of Music and in 1910 she went to London and further trained for Raymond von zur Mühlen. After her studies she was one of the most acknowledged operetta singers in Scandinavia.
- Her last film performance was Vindingevals in 1968, directed by Åke Falck, which premiered just a few weeks before her death, aged 78, that same year.
- Naima Wifstrand in the 1940s planned to retire from her own stage career by turning to directing, first at the Royal Swedish Opera 1944-1946.
- Ingmar Berman would also cast her in some of his most memorable early films, including Wild Strawberries, Smiles of a Summer Night and The Magician.
- The fact that, in 1947, she appeared in 8 films in addition to her other commitments says quite a lot about her capacity for performing given that she was nearly 60 years old. Nevertheless, her heyday as a film star was still yet to come.
- Her big break-through came as Countess Stasi in Emmerich Kálmán's operetta Die Csárdásfürstin in 1916.
- She worked in the 1920s mainly at the opera houses in Oslo and Copenhagen.
- For many years she lived in London where she also performed with troubadour-songs alone along with her guitar. A curiosity here is that when the first attempts at broadcast television took place in Britain Wifstrand became one of the first "TV-stars", so to speak, as she appeared on TV in the 1930s and performed a number of songs.
- It was perhaps her activities in London - playing Pierrot both on stage and on the screen, and its connotation with commedia dell'arte - which led Naima Wifstrand away from the heavily conventional acting style of the operetta stage to a completely different form of theatrical expression. The main reason behind this may rather have been her collaboration with her Gothenburg colleagues at the Lorensberg theatre and their Max Reinhardt-inspired modernist approach to stage acting.
- She worked at Oscarsteatern (Sweden's foremost operetta and musical stage) 1913-1918 and for years to come toured Sweden and Scandinavia.
- Naima Wifstrand was an admirer of Matilda Jungstedt and watched her devotedly when she sang the title role in Franz von Suppé's operetta Boccacio, performed at the Oscar theatre in 1907. Naima Wifstrand also appeared in that production herself as a member of the choir. Her next professional step was singing a minor soprano part in the operetta. During its third season she took on a more demanding role as Beatrice, one of Boccacio's flames. Two years later Naima Wifstrand followed in her mentor's footsteps by singing the lead role. This gradual advance toward leading parts was typical of the usual route to becoming a professional at a time when there were very few performing arts schools. Naima Wifstrand herself believed that the best, most practical such school was in fact the Swedish countryside.
- Naima Wifstrand stayed at Riksteatern for two years, from 1939-1941. During this time her appearances included Wilhelm Moberg's Rid i natt and as Mor Aase in Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt. These two roles served as passages towards more demanding spoken stage roles. Later her acting career would achieve its peak success when she performed as Farmor in Hjalmar Bergman's Farmor och Vår Herre, in productions at the Vasa theatre in 1960, in Malmö in 1962, and in Stockholm in 1963.
- After 20 long years of hard work and thousands of performances Naima Wifstrand's voice began to fail. She had appeared as Sylva Varescu on 1,036 occasions alone. Her vocal cords were worn and constantly inflamed. In 1926 a cyst was discovered in her left vocal cord requiring an operation two years later.
- She was a Swedish film actress, operetta singer, troubadour, director and composer.
- Due to some successful supporting parts in some Swedish 1940s films - where Naima surprised critics and proved herself a surprisingly strong and charismatic character actress - a number of Sweden's young stage and film directors approached her and offered her parts in dramatic productions on stage: one of these young directors was Ingmar Bergman. Later on Wifstrand became one of the director's most reliable and longtime ensemble actors.
- When Bertolt Brecht later left Germany because of the Nazis he first moved to Sweden where he lived for a time and wrote the part Mother Courage especially for Wifstrand - but sadly, she herself never got to play the part in what became one of Brecht's most successful plays. During his stay in Sweden, Wifstrand had helped Brecht both financially and also personally with accommodation.
- In her later years, she was cast in several supporting roles in Ingmar Bergman films.
- Naima Wifstrand was made a member of the royal order of the Vasa in 1955.
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