| Bo Svenson | |
|---|---|
| Born | Boris Lee Holder Svenson February 13, 1941 [1] Gothenburg, Sweden |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1967–present |
Bo Svenson (born February 13, 1941)[1] is a Swedish-born American actor, known for his roles in American genre films of the 1970s and 1980s.
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Svenson was born Boris Lee Holder Svenson in Göteborg, Sweden, the son of Lola Iris Viola (née Johansson), a big band leader, actress, and singer, and Birger Ragnar Svenson, a personal driver, athlete, and bodyguard for the King of Sweden.[1][2] His mother was of Russian descent.[3] Having emigrated to the United States in 1958, as a teenager, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1959–1965. After the Marines, he pursued a Ph.D. in metaphysics and attended UCLA.
He also holds a third degree black belt in judo. He was the 1961 Far East Judo Champion in the Heavyweight Division.[4][5]
In the mid-1970s, he took over the role (from Joe Don Baker) of lawman Buford Pusser in both sequels to the hit 1973 film Walking Tall, after Pusser himself, who had originally agreed to take over the role, died in an automobile crash. While the sequels were less successful than the original, he reprised the role again for the short-lived 1981 television series of the same name — a show for which he was the highest paid television actor at the time. Svenson also played the sadistic Soviet agent Ivan in the Magnum, P.I. episode "Did You See the Sunrise?" (1982), which many fans consider to be one of the long-running show's best episodes. Svenson has a cameo as an American colonel in Inglourious Basterds, as a tribute to his role in The Inglorious Bastards.[6]