Björn Andrésen: ‘The World’s Most Beautiful Boy’ Dies at 70 — A Tragic Figure in Cinema

Björn Andrésen, the Swedish actor once hailed as “The World’s Most Beau­ti­ful Boy”, has died at the age of 70. His pass­ing on Octo­ber 25, 2025, marks the end of a life that was both daz­zling and deeply haunt­ed by the fame that found him too young.

Andrésen rose to inter­na­tion­al fame at just 15 years old, when Ital­ian direc­tor Luchi­no Vis­con­ti cast him as Tadzio in the 1971 film Death in Venice. His ethe­re­al looks cap­ti­vat­ed audi­ences and crit­ics alike — but behind that frag­ile beau­ty lay a teenag­er over­whelmed by the world’s gaze.

Visconti’s film turned him into a sym­bol of unat­tain­able youth and beau­ty, a label that would fol­low Andrésen for decades. In inter­views lat­er in life, he admit­ted that the expe­ri­ence left him scarred rather than cel­e­brat­ed. “I was nev­er allowed to just be a per­son,” he once said, reflect­ing on the intense objec­ti­fi­ca­tion and media fren­zy that accom­pa­nied his fame.

Though he appeared in a few oth­er films and tele­vi­sion projects, includ­ing Mid­som­mar (2019), Andrésen large­ly stepped away from the spot­light. The 2021 doc­u­men­tary The Most Beau­ti­ful Boy in the World revealed the per­son­al toll of his ear­ly fame — a sto­ry of exploita­tion, lone­li­ness, and the strug­gle for iden­ti­ty that shad­owed him through­out his life.

Friends and fans remem­ber him as gen­tle, intro­spec­tive, and artis­tic — a man who car­ried the weight of beau­ty as both a gift and a curse. “He was more than an image,” one close friend said. “He was a poet, a dream­er, and some­one who longed to be seen for his soul, not just his face.”

Björn Andrésen is sur­vived by fam­i­ly and loved ones in Swe­den. His lega­cy remains a poignant reminder of the dan­gers of ide­al­iza­tion — and of a boy whose beau­ty became both his crown and his cross.