The Tragic Curse of Being the 'Most Beautiful Boy in the World'

The story of the “Most Beautiful Boy in the World” unfolds like a dark thriller.

It’s a story about the perils of child stardom. It’s a cautionary tale about the exploitation of young stars and the commoditization of beauty. It’s a horror story about the stripping of one’s agency at a young age and the reverberating effects that has on the rest of their life. It’s a glimpse at the generational cycle of trauma, guilt, and depression, and the seeming impossibility of feeling one’s own worth.

Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday, The Most Beautiful Boy in the World is a documentary entry in the beloved “Where are they now?” genre, albeit one of the more curious and unusual ones we’ve seen.

In 1970, when Björn Andrésen was 15, he was personally cast by famed Italian director Luchino Visconti in the film Death in Venice. The role of Tadzio required a vessel to live up to the description written by Thomas Mann in the novella from which the film was adapted: “...having honey-coloured hair, like a god in greek mythology. And the boy is not really human—rather, an angel of death.”

When the film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival a year later, Visconti proudly heralded Andrésen “the most beautiful boy in the world,” a coronation that made international headlines and turned the young teen into an overnight star and, to his great discomfort, sex symbol.

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World marries archival footage from the time with new interviews with Andrésen, now an aging actor and musician in his sixties living in Stockholm. (In a great piece of trivia, Andrésen played the community elder whose disturbing, grotesque death is the turning point to madness in the 2019 film Midsommar.)

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-tragic-curse-of-being-the-most-beautiful-boy-in-the-world?ref=home