Bjrn Andrsen, the actor and musician best known for his breakout role as a youngster in 1971s Death in Venice, has died. He was 70.

Andrsen died Saturday, Kristian Petri, co-directorof The Most Beautiful Boy in the World, a 2021 documentary about the actor, told the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. No cause of death was revealed.

Andrsen broke out as a 15-year-old actor in Italian director Luchino Viscontis Death in Venice, an adaptation of the 1912 novella of the same name by German author Thomas Mann. He played Tadzio, with whom an older man played by Dirk Bogarde becomes obsessed. At the premiere of the film, Visconti referred to Andrsen as the most beautiful boy in the world, a moniker that followed him throughout his life, much to his chagrin.

Andrsen spoke about his negative experiences with Visconti and the effects of overnight worldwide fame. He said the director took him to a gay nightclub with a group of grown men when he was just 16. Andrsen, who was straight, said he was not homophobic, but the way he was treated there, especially at such a young age, made him very uncomfortable.

The waiters at the club looked at me uncompromisingly as if I was a nice meaty dish, he said. I knew I couldnt react. It would have been social suicide. But it was the first of many such encounters.

After the film was released, Visconti never spoke with Andrsen again, and the actor talked openly about how the most beautiful label affected him personally and professionally. I felt like an exotic animal in a cage, he told The Guardian in 2003.

Four years ago in another piece in The Guardian, he said he would have told Visconti to fuck off if he were still alive and that the director didnt give a fuck about his feelings.

Ive never seen so many fascists and assholes as there are in film and theaer, Andrsen said. Luchino was the sort of cultural predator who would sacrifice anything or anyone for the work.

In that same interview, he said Death in Venice screwed up my life quite decently and lamented the fact that he would forever be known primarily for that one film.

In fact, Andrsen was an accomplished pianist and musician. He also became a pop star in Japan after the release of Death in Venice and performed and toured regularly with the Sven Erics dance band.

Years later, Petri and Kristina Lindstrm used the most beautiful quote as the title of their documentary about Andrsen, which also focused on the tragedies that befell him throughout his life. The doc, which premiered at Sundance, won the World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize at the festival.

Petri told Dagens Nyheter that Andrsen was a brave person.

Kristina and I had long talked about wanting to make a full-length film about Bjrn, Petri said. The idea was that he would tell his story himself, and we talked to him for a whole year before we started filming. Then we filmed for several years and it was both a fun and at times painful shoot.

Andrsens dad died in an accident when Andrsen was young, and his mom died by suicide when he was 10.

He had two children with his ex-wife, poet Susanna Roman: a daughter, Robine, and a son, Elvin, who died of sudden infant death syndrome at 9 months old. Andrsen was reportedly lying next to his son, drunk, when he died; the actor then went into a period of deep depression and alcohol abuse.

While Andrsen once described his career as chaos, he appeared in more than 30 movies and TV series, including a small role in the 2019 folk horror filmMidsommar.

Mike Barnes contributed to this report.