Örjan Ramberg

Örjan Ramberg was born Ralf Örjan Valter Rahmberg on 26 February 1948 in Örgryte, Gothenburg, and grew up in the Högsbo district of the city. As a young man he planned a career in music. He sang in the pop band Que, which rehearsed at Gothenburg's Cue Club, and in the summer of 1967, when Tommy Blom of Tages had his appendix removed, Ramberg stood in as the band's singer on its folk park tour.

In 1969 he released the single Balladen om killen, produced by Göran Lagerberg, which reached number 13 on the Swedish chart Tio i Topp. In the early 1970s he moved into musical theatre, with roles in the first Swedish productions of Hair in 1971 and Jesus Christ Superstar in 1972, in which reviewers praised his Herod. From 1974 to 1977 he trained at the national theatre school in Malmö, and in the same years he performed in cabaret shows at Fattighuset in Stockholm.

Ramberg joined the ensemble of the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Dramaten, in 1977, the year he also made his film debut in the cult film Jack. Over the next four decades he appeared in more than 80 Dramaten productions. His roles included the Master in Yuri Lyubimov's staging of The Master and Margarita in 1988, Count Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro in 1992, Johansson in Ingmar Bergman's production of Strindberg's The Ghost Sonata in 2000, Oberon in John Caird's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Edgar in Caird's production of The Dance of Death in 2007, Claudius in Hamlet in 2008, Prospero in The Tempest in 2010 and Eugene O'Neill in Lars Norén's Och ge oss skuggorna in 2015. His last Dramaten role was Jabe in Tennessee Williams's Orpheus Descending in 2019.

He won the Guldmasken award for best actor for his performance in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest at the Folkan theatre in the mid 1990s, received the Eugene O'Neill award in 2001, and in 2009 was awarded the royal medal Litteris et Artibus for distinguished artistic contributions as an actor.

On screen he appeared more occasionally. He played the photographer Harry Friberg in three Stieg Trenter adaptations for Swedish television in 1987, the editor Schyman in Colin Nutley's thriller Sprängaren in 2001, and a bar pianist in the television series Möbelhandlarens dotter in 2006. In 2014 he was one of the participants in the SVT series Stjärnorna på slottet.

Ramberg had three children: a daughter, the actress Tilde Fröling, with the actress Ewa Fröling; a son with the actress Lena Olin; and a son with the actress Lena Nilsson. In interviews over the years he spoke openly about a past marked by substance abuse and a reputation as a bad boy.

In the 1990s he lived with the singer Josefin Nilsson, who died in 2016. In 2019 SVT broadcast the documentary Josefin Nilsson: Älska mig för den jag är, which described physical and psychological abuse, including death threats, by a male partner who had been convicted for it. He was not named in the film but was widely identified on social media. Demonstrations followed and his work at Dramaten ended in late March 2019. In a 2019 opinion piece in Aftonbladet he asked how long he would be punished for his crime, and he pursued legal action against SVT.

Örjan Ramberg died on Friday 14 August 2026 at Ersta Hospice in Stockholm, aged 78. His daughter Tilde Fröling announced the death the next day, writing that she had held his hand as he took his last breaths while church bells rang outside, that he had not been in pain, and that she and her brother George were at his side. The death was also confirmed by Dramaten's press office. No cause of death was made public.

Dramaten said he was a large part of its modern history, adding that it was impossible to avoid the memory of the controversies around him and his departure in 2019, but that his long line of fine performances in iconic productions was beyond doubt. His former colleague Lena Endre described him as a wonderfully fine actor of great range with an unbeatable sense of humour. He was survived by his three children and two grandchildren.

Ramberg was one of the leading actors of Dramaten's ensemble from the late 1970s to the late 2010s, appearing in productions by Ingmar Bergman, John Caird, Lars Norén and Staffan Valdemar Holm. His career is remembered alongside the 2019 controversy over Josefin Nilsson, which made him a central figure in Sweden's public debate about abuse in close relationships. His daughter Tilde wrote after his death that a person's life is larger than their mistakes, and that she would work to have him remembered as the whole person he was and as the actor and artist he had been.